


Pretty Monsters

by mugsandpugs



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon-Jewish Characters, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Polyamory, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-10-23 09:51:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 45,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: Adult Lance, having broken up with Pietro years prior, is kidnapped. Pietro must then work with the cause of their breakup, Kitty, to rescue him. Along the way, he learns new things about Kitty, Lance, and himself. (Eventual Lance/Pietro and Lance/Kitty healthy polyamory)





	1. Iced Over

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend looking at [this](http://mugsandpugs1.tumblr.com/prettymonsters) complete index of individual chapters and their warnings, as this story does touch on multiple sensitive and potentially triggering topics. Thank you for reading!

There was nothing on his mind when he danced; no worries of school, no stressing over his job with SHIELD. There was only the pulsing overhead lights changing his hair color with every half-heartbeat, and the press of sweaty, anonymous bodies all around. Sound and thought were drowned out by music cranked to eleven by a DJ that expertly read the crowd, building momentum impossibly high and then letting it crash explosively down. 

The tiny green pills he’d eagerly licked off a pretty girl’s palm competed with his high metabolism to soften the edges of the world around him, to increase his skin’s sensitivity as bodies brushed his. 

Large hands seized his hips and, snarling, Pietro whirled to tell the handsy stranger to back the fuck off, that he was only here for the dancing, but the annoyed expression died on his face when he got a good look at the man. Tall and handsome with long dark hair, tanned skin, and the promise of danger in his smile, he was all sharp lines in zippered black leather. Precisely Pietro’s type. 

Wasn’t the specific reason he came here every Friday night to forget the world and have a good time? 

His hesitation was resolved for him when the stranger took Pietro’s stilled arms by the wrists and linked them around his own neck. Then, returning his grip to Pietro’s hips, he rolled their groins together in the guise of dancing. 

Damn, whatever that girl had given him was good. His moan was lost in the music, and he eagerly resumed dancing, shamelessly grinding the man’s leg. Pietro made more of an effort to show off now that he knew he had a captive audience, moving with a fluidity and ease that wasn’t quite human. 

“I’m Wolf!” the man shouted, his lips practically pressed to Pietro’s ear to be heard. “Been watching you all night, Pretty Boy.” 

“Like what you see?” Pietro smirked and, true to his namesake, Wolf’s smile grew hungry and predatory in nature. 

“Very much.” 

Pietro was a sucker for flattery. He turned his back and ground his ass unsubtly into Wolf, joints and spine sinuous as water, and gave the man a heavy-lidded glance over his shoulder. 

This time it was Wolf’s turn to moan; pupils so longingly dilated that Pietro felt an thrilling rush of power. “Keep doing that, and I’m gonna need to take you outside,” the tall stranger warned. 

Pietro bit his lower lip and deliberately rolled his hips again. 

Minutes later he was being hauled from the club, past the bouncers, and across the street. He followed, feeling swimmy and lightheaded. Hookups with strangers were fairly uncommon in his life, but the daring adrenalin surge it evoked was intoxicating. 

Wolf surprised him once they’d found an alley behind an apartment complex by pressing his own back to the wall and pulling Pietro onto him. Usually it was the other way around, but this was kind of refreshing; he liked the rush of power that standing on his toes to nip at Wolf’s lips gave him, and feeling stomach muscles ripple under his palms as he explored Wolf’s solid torso. Lance always wanted to be on top… 

No, he wasn’t going to think about Lance right now. Or ever, preferably. 

He pressed Wolf harder into the wall and nipped at his neck, then his lower lip, drawing it back roughly before releasing it. Wasn’t this the point of sex with a stranger? Doing whatever one wanted without worrying about tomorrow? 

Wolf’s fingers curled around his upper arms, pressing tight enough to leave bruises as Pietro licked his Adam’s apple, enjoying the taste of his sweat, the faint lingering scent of his aftershave. 

So suddenly that he jumped, a second man arrived out of nowhere to press to his back, pinning him easily against Wolf. Pietro stiffened, hands balling into fists at his sides as he prepared to turn and punch this mysterious newcomer. 

Wolf gave a breathless laugh. "Oh, don't worry about him, Pretty Boy. He's just my friend. You don't mind a little company, do you?" 

This 'friend' had taken his wrists and was squeezing them. Although Pietro couldn't see him, he knew this man was strong from the way the fine bones in his wrists began to creak. 

"Actually I do mind," he replied, frowning. Even through the already-clearing fog his brain was still in, something about this situation wasn't sitting right with him. "I'm not much a fan of sharing and- what are you doing?" 

Something sharp and metallic touched the back of his neck. A needle. Panic now blooming in full, Pietro jerked hard, dislodging the tip from his neck as he smashed his forehead into Wolf’s nose and mouth, simultaneously shoving his hard elbow into the gut of the man pressing him down. 

"Don't let him start running!” Wolf ordered thickly through a broken nose, sounding completely different from his seductive club growls. 

Pietro dropped to the ground, and the already loosened grip on his wrists fell away. He brought his legs to his chest and bucked, catching Wolf in the knees. There was a loud crunch of bone snapping before he collapsed sideways, howling. 

Jumping back to his feet, Pietro was prepared to run when a fist caught the side of his head and the momentum grazed his face off the rough stone wall. There was a ringing in the boxed ear and he stared, disoriented, at the second man- blonde and completely unfamiliar, built tall and boxy like a refrigerator. 

"Don't think you can get away from us, _мутант,"_ he chuckled in thickly accented English. He had a syringe in his left hand and, when he swung forward in a second punch, the dripping needle came mere centimeters from Pietro's face. 

Heart pounding in rabbit-quick terror, Pietro leapt and wrapped his arm around the man's throat, squeezing him tightly. And though the man flailed, choking, it was effortless to twist his head as hard as he could. 

With a series of firecracker pops, he fell limp in Pietro's arms, the syringe clattering from his loose fingers to the dirty stone alleyway where the thin glass shattered, spilling its contents into the cement cracks. 

The corpse he held was still twitching convulsively when, horrified and sickened, Pietro dropped him. He landed on top of Wolf, who’s right leg sat bent at an unnatural angle. He groaned softly when Pietro gave him an experimental nudge with the toe of his boot. 

Overwhelmed and terrified, Pietro _ran._

He made it only to a coffeeshop the next block over when he was forced to stop, his stomach heaving, as he leaned over a trash bin and vomited profusely. He was wiping off his face with the back of his hand, reeling brain too scattered to fully process what had just happened, when a soft, feminine voice called, "Pietro?" 

He jerked to a standing position and saw a small woman in a barista's uniform, a black trash bag in her hands, just emerging from the shop. She looked to be in her early twenties and had long, glossy brown hair falling over one shoulder. Shadowcat; the last person Pietro wanted to be interacting with right now. 

"Oh my gosh, it _is_ you. Are you okay?" 

She stepped closer, and Pietro took an instinctive step back to keep them at the same distance. 

"You look awful. Did someone hit you?" Her blue eyes were sweeping over him, taking in his skimpy and now torn club outfit as well as the no doubt swelling redness to his cheek. 

"Lance is coming to walk me home from work soon," she remarked when he said nothing, clearly drawing her own conclusions. "Why don't you wait inside? Then-" 

"Thanks, but no," Pietro replied coolly, finally recovering enough to find his voice. "I have plans. Have a good night, Katherine." 

Ignoring her protests, he gave the streets a cursory glance to be sure that no humans were watching before he sped away, too quick for the eye to follow. 

He cursed his own bad luck as his trustworthy legs took him far away- a mile of cityscape becoming five, twenty, thirty-five, passing the bad side of town and then the suburbs, too. Of all the coffee shops in the entirety of Bayville, he had to stumble across the one where Kitty worked the late shift. 

He didn’t really blame her for what had happened two years ago. _Lance_ had chosen _her;_ he’d made that plenty damn clear. No; Pietro blamed _himself_ for ever being so dumb as to think that Alvers might stay in the first place. 

And if that had been it- she won; Pietro lost- he might be able to get over it. But Alvers wouldn’t fucking leave him alone. Kitty was sure to gab her big mouth about running into him looking like a human punching bag, and then Alvers would get on his intrusive high horse and start butting into Pietro’s life where he wasn’t needed. Again. 

It was like he had somehow missed the memo that they were finished. 

He ran on into the night, through zip codes and construction sites and shopping centers. He ran past Xavier’s mansion, and then the boarding home where he’d spent his teenage years. Past Bayville high school, and past his own apartment complex. Then he was in another residential neighborhood; small, diverse houses and trailers, too shabby and spaced apart to be considered proper suburbs. 

It was here his speeding slowed to a jog, and then to a walk, when he realized where he’d been going all along. The beginnings of a smile ghosted his lips as he rounded a corner and approached a nondescript one-story with a peeling yellow paint job, dark except for one light- the kitchen light- which glowed invitingly. 

The peony bushes by the front porch rustled as he climbed the steps, and out popped a small, tailless fox. 

“Hey, Moxie,” he greeted, and scratched under her chin. She waggled her stump and gave him a dopey vulpine smile before returning to her leafy bed. Fred had found her bleeding on the side of the road a few months ago and had nursed her back to physical health, but she would forever be a little on the dim side. Most of his animal companions had similar backstories to hers, whether they stayed with him forever or only for a few weeks. 

Fred was at the screen door when he straightened up, watching him calmly. He wore a massive, stiff white apron over his pajamas and brought with him the scent of warm vanilla. A fat bearded dragon dozed on his shoulder. 

For the first time since the attack at the club, Pietro felt some of his panic fade. “Hey,” he said again, and Fred opened the door to let him in. 

“Can I crash here tonight?” Pietro asked, stepping inside, where the vanilla scent increased tenfold. Yet another round of late-night baking, it seemed; they all dealt with recurring insomnia in their own ways. 

“You know you don’t need to ask.” 

Above the fireplace, dormant since the end of spring, hung Todd’s high school diploma, dated the same year as Pietro’s; Fred’s diploma (with a lot of help, he’d managed to graduate at age nineteen), and a framed candid photograph of the two of them with Wanda at a barbeque restaurant. It was Pietro’s favorite picture of his sister; unlike her usual stony, expressionless gaze, here her mouth was quirked in a soft, genuine, smile. 

He gently shooed a sleeping gray cat off the worn sofa and sat, unlacing his boots and stretching his sore legs out in front of him. 

Fred was still watching him, head cocked. “Someone hit you.” Unlike Kitty, his voice wasn’t questioning, but certain. “I’ll kill them.” 

Pietro laughed, warmed by the very earnest tone to the big man’s voice. “No need, Freddie. I already did.” 

“Was it someone at the club?” He took one of Pietro’s arms and held it to the light, examining the forming bracelet of purple bruises marring his pale wrist. 

“Yeah. Two guys. One of them had a syringe, but I broke it on accident so I don’t know what was in it. I think they were trying to kidnap me.” 

Fred’s eyes narrowed, taking in the ripped collar of Pietro’s mesh shirt. “Do you think they knew you’re a mutant?” 

That thought hadn’t occurred to Pietro until now. Gently taking his arm back- in his anger, Fred was unconsciously beginning to squeeze too hard- he fell back onto the sofa, flinging his legs over the arm and closing his eyes. 

“Nah, man. I think they were just your run-of-the-mill creeps.” He said this lightly, as though the thought of being kidnapped and raped or sold into trafficking were no big deal, but Fred knew him better than that. 

“You should be more careful,” he scolded. “I don’t want to lose you.” 

“Aww,” Pietro crooned teasingly. “Do you _looove_ me, Freddie?” 

“Yes,” the blob-like mutant replied, plainly and without guile, before turning back to his work in the kitchen.

He listened to Fred pouring batter into muffin tins, his footsteps so heavy that the floor shook as he moved. This house, where Fred, Wanda, and Todd lived together, was one of the few places in the world he could truly relax. It was a _home,_ while his apartment was just some walls and appliances. He hadn’t so much as bothered to decorate in the year he’d lived there. Soon he’d get the urge to pack up and move somewhere else equally bland. It was a never-ending cycle. 

He must have dozed off, but startled alert once more when something soft was thrown over him- a blanket. He pretended he was still asleep as Fred left a few things for him on the coffee table- a spare phone charger, a glass of water, and one of his freshly-baked muffins. Then the lights above him were turned off as Fred walked down the hall to his bedroom. 

After Pietro shucked off his pants, plugged his phone in, and, surprised at his own hunger, downed the food and drink, he found himself feeling immeasurably better. He also felt exhausted. Rolling over on the soft sofa cushions, he was dragged into a dreamless sleep once more. 

* * *

“Tro if you don’t make your phone shut up right now I’m feeding it to the freaking cat!” 

Pietro groaned and tried to roll into a tighter ball as Todd’s loud voice seared his eardrums. “Five more minutes,” he complained. 

“I _will_ slime you,” the other man- it sounded as though he were standing right above the couch- threatened, and so Pietro reluctantly reemerged into the world of wakefulness. 

Todd’s pale face came into focus. If they weren’t so familiar, having spent their teen years living together and now working in the same SHIELD defense faction, the sight of him first thing in the morning would be an alarming one. With skin white as ivory, bright yellow eyes to match his teeth, and stringy brown hair falling to his mid-back, he looked like someone who would be unpleasant to encounter on a dark street. 

Pietro only made a face at him, and then winced at the movement of his sore, swollen cheek. “What are you talking about?” 

“Sheesh,” Todd hissed tactlessly. “You look like you should be in a public service announcement for battered wives. Your phone has been going off for an hour.” 

Pietro reached for it- oh, his arm hurt, too- and grabbed the small plastic flip phone, pulling out the charger before opening it. Seven missed calls and twenty-three text messages awaited him, all from the same, unsaved number. Although it wasn’t in his contacts, Pietro had already guessed the sender. 

“Fucking Alvers,” he rolled his eyes. Without reading any of the messages he responded with a simple, _I’m fine,_ and then turned off his phone, pocketing it. 

“You and he are still on the outs, huh?” Todd asked, idly scratching behind one of his ears. “Doesn’t sound like he _wants_ to be on the outs.” 

“We are not _on the outs,”_ Pietro clarified irritably, standing, cramming his long bare legs back into his jeans, and heading for the kitchen. He helped himself to a bowl of corn flakes and a second muffin. “That implies that there’s an _in_ to get back to. We are done, period.” 

Todd followed him, and Pietro noticed that he was dressed in his work uniform. Although he and Todd worked for the same faction- espionage, mostly- their different skill sets meant their work hours and requirements didn’t always overlap. He didn’t have to report back in until Monday, unless Fury called him with an emergency. 

“See, I just don’t get that,” Todd continued, and began peeling a banana. “So he’s with this Kitty chick. So what? I don’t see why the two should be exclusive. She gets Tuesdays, you get Fridays; it all works out.” He waggled his eyebrows and then bit suggestively into his breakfast. “A little Lance to go around.” 

“That’s disgusting.” Pietro made a face. “Why don’t you try explaining that philosophy to my sister? Is _she_ your Tuesday girl?” 

“You Maximoffs. So prickly.” Todd thought a minute, then shrugged. “To each their own, I guess. But you really love him, and he really loves you, and he also really loves her. Why does it have to be so complicated? You're making yourselves miserable.” 

“I’m done having this conversation.” 

* * *

A small form was sitting on the front steps to his apartment, knees folded to her chest as she texted on her pink flip-phone when he finally made it home. She scrambled to her feet when he paused in front of her, and even though he was several stairs below, he was still taller. 

"Hello, Pietro," Kitty greeted. "I’ve been waiting for you all morning. I got your address off your SHIELD files." 

"I can see that," he replied, keeping his face and tone devoid of emotion. "Sorry, but I'm not buying any girl scout cookies." 

He stepped around her, unlocked his door, and let himself into his apartment in one smooth motion, locking the door behind him and walking through the sparse living space to his kitchen. 

With a noise of annoyance, she phased through his front door and hastened after him. 

"I don't like you," she stated bluntly. 

Pietro raised his straight, white eyebrows, vaguely amused. "Consider the feeling mutual, pipsqueak. Don’t you have anything better to do?" 

He felt her staring at his back as he filled a glass at his sink and gulped the water down without offering any. Although he’d showered at Fred and Todd’s place, and noticed that his bruised and swollen face had healed significantly during sleep, he wasn’t feeling his best in yesterday’s ruined clothes, his hair hanging limp without product or styling. He was certainly not feeling up to dealing with impeccably dressed X-Men who happened to be dating his ex. 

"I'm not done," she retorted. "I think you're rude and selfish and cowardly, and I don't know why Lance is so hung up on you, but I think you should talk to him, because he is constantly worrying and moping over you every time you go and do something stupid." 

Pietro took his time filling and drinking a second glass of water before turning to face her, looking her up and down with every ounce of disdain he could muster. He knew his best bitch-face could make even the most confident person feel small and worthless. 

"I think you should leave," he said, pleasantly but firmly. "And I don't want you coming back, do you understand?" 

She'd recoiled from his glance, but hadn't crumbled entirely. "He still loves you," she said, and though her eye-contact remained steadfast, he saw a twitch to the corner of her mouth. It had cost her something to admit this. 

"Alright." Pietro's limited patience supply was officially used up. How many times was he going to have to hear this junk in twenty-four hours? "Get out." He took a step forward, intending to lift and carry her to the doorstep if need be. 

Suddenly Kitty went quite stiff, eyes blank and glassy, and she collapsed in a dead faint. Pietro dove to catch her before she hit the ground and saw, protruding from the nape of her neck, a small metal dart. He dodged a second dart flying for him from the open kitchen window. He had time only to drop to the floor, crouching over her prone form, before the north wall of his apartment exploded in a wave of rubble and dust.


	2. Warming Up

Although Pietro had been trained for combat, much of his work involved avoiding fights, not being thrust in the middle of them. He wasn't a combat agent like Fred or Lance, but was used primarily for covertly gathering information and bringing it from one area to another. 

Kitty groaned when he flipped her over and removed the dart from her neck, shoving it in the back pocket of his tight jeans. It didn't look like she'd be any use to him any time soon, so he looked around, wondering where he could safely hide her before bullets started flying. Was she small enough to fit inside one of the kitchen cupboards? 

But no, there was just no time for that. Already, armed agents in hazmat suits were pouring through the remainder of his wall, and he had time only to grab her and run for his bedroom. 

The agents were clearly not prepared for this; evidentially, the plan had been to tranquilize _him._ Kitty's presence had not been part of their plan. 

They exclaimed in alarm as he vanished, giving him valuable seconds to shut his door and drag his bed, frame and all, in front of it, dropping Kitty on the rumpled blankets to free his arms as he did so. Then he seized the heaviest thing he could- the chair from his desk- and spun in a circle as fast as he was able. Though space was limited, he was able to get a good momentum going before releasing the chair, which sailed through his bolted window, shattered glass flying spectacularly. 

The agents had reached his door and were attacking it with all their might; someone pulled a trigger and Pietro barely had time to grab Kitty up again before bullets embedded themselves in his bed, sending loose springs and cotton flying. 

He hoped some other apartment-dweller had thought to call the police at all the commotion; these faceless, masked men seemed unhinged enough not to care about killing civilians. Whoever they were- mutant or human, a solo hit job or a growing organization- they wanted him, and maybe Kitty, too. 

He ran to the window and, praying that his training courses with Todd had paid off, he dropped her. 

A bullet whizzed over his head, and he leapt out the window after Kitty, running vertically down the length of the apartment. _If you'd told me this morning that I'd be throwing Shadowcat out of a three-story building,_ he thought sarcastically as he leveled out on the street and held up his palms. _I'd have asked if it was my birthday already._

She landed squarely in his arms half a heartbeat later and he grinned. He'd have to remember that one the next time Todd complained of his bruises from Pietro dropping him in training. _But Todd, the sacrificial bruising to your lily-white ass saves_ lives! 

He had time only to adjust his hold on her, mashing her face to his chest and covering her exposed ear with a palm- Fury said he lost rescuer points every time a rescuee's eardrums or eyeballs ruptured from wind pressure, the picky bastard- before more gunfire signaled his time to run. He'd vanished by the time bullets from multiple firearms struck the blacktop where he'd been standing. 

As he covered miles of ground, a memory wiggled to the surface; teenaged Kitty, bravely diving into the armored tank where he was imprisoned, phasing him through as the vehicle tumbled down a mountainside. She'd held onto him tightly despite her own precarious grip on craggy rocks, their legs dangling forty feet high as the tank crashed and burned below them. 

He supposed he could now consider that life-debt repaid. 

He didn't run at his full speed, not yet. Instead he deliberately left footprints and traces, a chip off a building here, a broken tree stump there. The more they had to follow him by, the less these attacking weirdos would waste time harassing civilians for his whereabouts. When he'd left enough of a false trail to keep them busy for a while, then he truly pushed his speed to the maximum, making good time towards Xavier institute. Much as he disliked everything about it, they were most likely able to help them in this situation; more so, even, than SHIELD. 

And, though he'd never admit it, he wanted just then to be surrounded by other mutants, not highly-trained humans with a few mutants scattered here and there. In times of stress, he preferred his kind to theirs. 

He was just passing Bayville Park- a landmark that he knew meant he was going in the right direction- when he realized that his arms were empty, and he no longer carried anybody at all. "The hell?" 

Turning, he retraced his steps and found Kitty lying on her side in some bushes, windswept brown hair covering her face. "Um..." 

When he touched her shoulder, his hand passed straight through her. In her unconscious state, her body had had the bright idea to go incorporeal. 

"Shadowcat," he said sternly. He tried to scoop an arm under her legs; it was like trying to carry mist. "Katherine. Kitty, whatever. Can you wake up please? Or at least stop doing that?" 

If she heard him, she made no response. 

"This isn't the best time to be a pain in the ass," he reminded her. 

When he continued to gather no response, he growled in annoyance and stood up to pace. "I'll leave you here," he threatened. It was a hollow threat, even to his own ears. 

Finally, he pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in a number he almost never used. 

"What," Wanda answered after the second ring, and he remembered guiltily that she worked overnight on Fridays. She'd likely just gotten to bed not an hour ago. 

"I could really, really use a favor." 

Waiting for the familiar rumble of her Harley approaching, Pietro paced anxiously. His modus operandi was to run _away_ from Problems; not to be stuck at a standstill waiting for Problems to catch up to him. Twice he tried lifting Kitty, and twice he found himself unable to even touch her. Only the slow rise and fall of her chest indicated that she was still breathing. 

"Man, they really zonked you out with this stuff, huh," he marveled, and examined the dart from his pocket. It was lightweight metal and shaped like a fish with a hollow belly, where some whitish fluid still swam. "I'm actually kinda glad they hit you, and not me. But you'd probably call me 'cowardly and selfish' for that. Huh. Well maybe I am." 

He'd been told more than once that he was intolerable when he was bored. After wearing down the grass with excessive pacing, he pulled his flip-phone from his pocket once more. 

The messages from Lance, unread and unheard, stared accusingly at him. He'd have to at least glance at them eventually, or the little orange notifications would judge him every time he opened his phone. With a groan, he scrolled through the texts first. 

_Kitty said you were beat up tonight???_  
_Pietro, answer me._  
_Why don't you ever pick up calls?_  
_Am I the only one you ignore, or is it everyone?_  
_Tro!!!_  
_Fine, you know what? I don't care._

There was an almost two-hour pause between that text and the next few: 

_Maybe I care a little._  
_If you want people to leave you alone, then you should stop getting into trouble._

This went on for quite a few messages, finally concluding with:  
_Please just be more careful._

Pietro wondered if Lance had been drinking last night. He drank a lot; so much so that Pietro used to ask him, half-jokingly, half-seriously, if he had a problem. If he was a burgeoning alcoholic, he was at least a functioning one; the gym he occasionally worked at absolutely loved him, and he was one of Fury's favorites. 

He punched in his voicemail password and held the receiver to his ear, tapping his foot as he sat on a stump close enough to be on Kitty's guard, though he didn't know what he was supposed to do to help her now if the agents found them in their fancy helicopter. 

There was a long, static-filled pause before Lance's tinny, recorded voice began speaking in his ear. 

_"I don't know what your deal is, man, but I think you exist to scare the hell out of me. Kitty said you were all bruised up, and your clothes were shredded, and it looked like... Stuff had happened. I know you don't like me anymore, or whatever, but we're on the same team. We both work for the same place. We're coworkers! If something happens to you, our team is sunk. You're the absolute worst, you know that? You're supposed to report when shit happens. It's part of our job."_

The message cut off after another minute of drawly rambling and some benign name calling- he'd definitely been drinking. Pietro deleted it and waited for the next to play when a familiar, motored growl made him look up. Wanda's motorcycle, at last. 

She parked and slid gracefully from her mount, removing her helmet and carrying it under her arm. Somehow, she made rumpled bed-head and deep purple eyebags look chic; such was the Maximoff way. 

"Hey, sis," Pietro greeted, zipping to her side. Enigmatic as always, she gave him only a perfunctory, tight-lipped smile before she knelt at Kitty's side. He'd explained the basic details of their situation over the phone, but her presence made him anxious, and he found his motormouth on full-flux as he hovered over them. 

"She was over at my place annoying me and some group of creeps shot her with a dart through the window, but I think it was meant for me. Anyways they blew up my apartment but I managed to get away and then we ended up here and I don't really know what to do-" 

Patiently ignoring his babble, Wanda pressed a hand to Kitty's, her own eyes closed in concentration. Then she leaned forward, trying to push Kitty's hair back from her face. She managed to do so, with a little difficulty, and then she bent further and touched their foreheads together. 

In a matter of seconds, Kitty had solidified, her skin transforming from an opaque translucence to a healthy flesh-color. Her lips fluttered, and from her eyes leaked shimmering, milky tears that Wanda calmly swiped away with her thumbs. Pietro recognized it as the same substance that had been inside the dart. 

After a moment, her blue eyes opened and she stared up at them, looking puzzled. "Wanda? Where am I?" she croaked, voice hoarse. 

Pietro felt impressed with his sister. She'd managed to drag Kitty back from whatever fog she'd been trapped in- mentally and physically. 

"You're in Bayville Park," Wanda explained in her low, steady voice. She sat back and gently helped Kitty sit up, too. "You were attacked. Pietro is going to take you to Xavier's mansion for safety and help. I've briefly taken away use of your powers, but you'll regain them shortly." 

"Pietro," Kitty mumbled, and then turned to gawk at him. "He _saved_ me?" 

"Hey, don't look so surprised," he mumbled, feeling awkward. "I'm not a total monster. I don't eat puppies for breakfast or whatever you X-Men think." 

"I need to go," Wanda declared, standing and brushing grass off her long coat. "If someone's attacking mutants, there are people I need to check on." 

"You mean Todd?" Pietro asked slyly, and was rewarded by a stinging punch to his shoulder as she passed him. Before she'd made it all the way to her bike, she turned back and grabbed him. 

"Hey-" he protested, but she only stood on tip-toe and kissed his forehead, then released him. The place where she'd kissed burned hot enough to hurt for just a moment, and then faded to a tingle, then nothing. 

"For extra protection," she explained cryptically. "Be careful, brother." 

Then she kicked her bike into gear and was roaring back in the direction she'd come from with no more words said. 

Pietro stared after her, bemused. It was good that someone was looking after Todd and Fred; with her around, he knew they'd be safe. 

Kitty's soft grunt as she tried to climb to her feet had him turning his attention back to her. 

"Better let me do that," he said. "I can get us there faster, and we might still be being followed." 

She didn't look too pleased about this, but she allowed him to lift her from the grass. 

"Where's your earring?" she asked groggily, and he looked down in puzzlement. She tapped his earlobe, right over the healed-over piercing scar. "You used to wear a stud there. I always thought it was cool." 

The notion that not only had Kitty noticed such a small thing about him, but _admired_ it, was an odd one. "Fury made me take it out when I joined SHIELD," he explained. "Something about public image." 

She made a face at that, like she disagreed with Fury's aesthetic sensibilities. Then she looped an arm around his neck, and it was a mark of how poorly she was feeling that she didn't complain much when he covered her ear and tucked her face into his chest. 

They made it to Xavier's in record time, and then Pietro hovered uncertainly outside the wrought-iron gates. He'd never exactly been welcomed inside here before. He wondered whether it'd be wiser to just leave Kitty outside, maybe pin a note to her shirt. _Please return to Charles._ The thought made him grin. 

Kitty reached and, underneath a gargoyle's stone likeness, pressed a hidden button, which hummed as it scanned her thumbprint. 

The gates swung invitingly open into a courtyard of massive water features, fragrant rose bushes, and grass lush and soft enough to sleep in all leading up to a grandiose mansion; the home of Kitty's youth. 

He swallowed nervously and, glancing at Kitty's encouraging face, took two steps onto the property before security alarms began to scree sharply, and red flashing lights near-blinded him. 

"Put her down," a low voice snarled, and all of a sudden Logan was loping towards them. His claws were sheathed, but the look on his face suggested that that could be quickly amended. There was something gut-sinkingly familiar in his eyes, his tone. It was clear that when he looked at Pietro, all he saw was one thing: Magneto's kid. 

Pietro wondered how long he'd been watching them on security footage. 

"I saved her life," Pietro huffed defensively, but did as the ageless mutant ordered, gently lowering his left arm until Kitty's sneaker-clad feet touched the ground, and then kept an arm around her shoulders as she found her balance. As abruptly as they'd begun, the alarms ceased, leaving the acres of property eerily quiet. 

Logan leaned in close- so close that Pietro resisted the urge to step back- and _sniffed_ him; a hot, whuffling breath that made his hair flutter. Before he could question this, Logan repeated the same motion with Kitty. Then he sneered at him and reached for Kitty's hand, tugging her after him. On shaky legs, she was forced to follow. "You stay here," he commanded Pietro. "I'll tell the professor we've got an uninvited guest." 

Despite his bafflement at such bizarre behavior, Pietro felt his lip curling, a snappy retort on his own tongue, and was surprised when Kitty beat him to it. 

"Stop it, Logan," she commanded her old teacher, and twisted her hand free of his grasp. "You're being a total jerk. Xavier's school is a haven for _all_ mutants in need; Pietro can come with us if he wants to." 

She had a stare-down with the man, and for all of Logan's feral-animal bluster, it was clear that he was not going to be the victor of this battle of wills. After a moment, he sighed in exasperation and pulled ahead of them, two hands tossed into the air as if to say, _it's your funeral._ "Fine; Charles can deal with him." 

Pietro arched a single eyebrow at Kitty when she turned her attention back to him. "Damn, Pryde," he muttered. "That was almost badass." 

She rolled her eyes at him, but he swore for a moment her mouth quirked in the beginnings of a smile. "Whatever. Are you coming or not?" 

He followed her and Logan through the grounds of the mansion and into the lavishly decorated hallway. He saw a couple kids- young mutants, maybe even newly-discovered- watching them from the floor above, but didn't acknowledge them. 

Kitty swayed slightly just a few steps shy of oaken double-doors decorated with the Roman goddess Minerva in raised carving, and Pietro caught her shoulder. "You shouldn't be walking," he said nervously, motor-mouth getting the better of him yet again. "Where's the sick room? Can't I just take you there now and get it over with before you puke all over yourself? That'd be embarrassing for everyone involved, namely, me." 

"Can it, wise guy," Logan grunted, and opened the doors to what looked like a large and well-stocked library. Beechwood shelves lined with hundreds of leather-bound books ran floor to ceiling save for one wall that was made entirely of glass and provided a beautiful view of the lush green property. At a desk, glasses perched on his nose and a heavy tome spread out before him, was Charles. 

Unlike Logan, Professor Xavier was looking significantly older than the last time Pietro had seen him, and when he turned to face them, Pietro found himself swimming in the same wave of resentment that always plagued him at Charles' presence. He tried to squash it down before it could be sensed- damn mindreaders never could keep their noses in their own damn business- and offered a brief nod. 

Logan spoke first. "Half-pint was standing out front with Mag- I mean... with Pietro." 

Pietro clenched his jaw at the sound of his father's name, seething. He hated it here. For all their wealth and pretty speeches about harmony, the X-Men would always be a bunch of elite narcissists patting themselves on the back over very small accomplishments in his book. 

Ignoring them both, he grabbed a wheeled chair and dragged it over to Kitty, glaring at her until she sat and put her head between her knees, breathing deeply from the effort of walking. "We were attacked this morning," he explained, and crossed his arms defensively. "And we're still being chased." 

"Logan," Charles said softly. "Why don't you ask someone to bring refreshments? I sense both our guests' blood sugars are running very low." 

Logan looked irritated at being sent away- although Pietro he wasn't sure the man was capable of expressing any other emotion- but obediently left the room. 

"Why don't you sit as well, Pietro?" Charles offered, and gestured to a second armchair beside Kitty's. Pietro considered arguing, to hold onto whatever power that standing offered him, but he wasn't a teenager anymore. He could play nice, much as it rankled him. He dragged the chair closer and sank into it. 

If Charles sensed his discomfort, he kindly refrained from commenting. Steepling his fingers together, he regarded them both over the tops of his glasses. "It seems you have quite the story to tell," he observed. "Please, start from the beginning."


	3. Breaking Open

Kitty remained quiet while Pietro filled the professor in on what had happened. After a minute, a large and blue-furred man that Pietro recognized as Dr. Hank McCoy entered the library, burdened with a tray of sliced fruits and bottled drinks, which he set on Charles' desk before tending to the girl.

Pietro handed the doctor the dart he'd plucked from Kitty's neck (she obligingly swept her hair aside for him to study the pinprick entry mark) and then helped himself to water and strawberries. The sugar settled quickly in his system, calming his nerves and shaking hands. 

"So that's the story," he concluded, feeling fidgety and awkward as Hank checked Kitty's pulse and pupil response. "Can I go now? I've got people I want to check on." 

"Wait, Pietro," Charles commanded when he half-rose from his chair, and somehow Pietro knew what he was going to ask for. Though he'd been avoiding it for the entirety of his explanation, he forced himself to make eye-contact now. 

"Look, I brought her to you," he said, pointing at Kitty while making for the door. "I did more than anyone could expect of me. Can't you consider that good enough?" 

"Pietro, I'd like to take a look inside your mind," Charles said and, hearing this, Hank made a little half-step as though to bar Pietro's exit. His anxiety flared anew. 

"I just bet you would!" he snarled defensively, body braced as though for another attack. "Are you gonna _force_ me to let you? That'd be just like you, wouldn't it?" 

Everyone in the room fell silent at the crack in Pietro's voice; Kitty was looking very confused and Xavier, grim. 

"Charles, maybe it'd be better if Jean-" Hank started to say, but was interrupted. 

"I understand you have some lingering resentment towards me," the old man conceded, stubbornly continuing to hold Pietro's gaze. "But if I look at the memories of this afternoon through your eyes, I may pick up details that you, in a state of adrenalynn, do not remember. It may help to save others." 

"You can look at my memories," Kitty offered helpfully. "Pietro sounds like he really doesn't want-" 

"No," Charles cut her off without so much as looking at her. "You were not facing the attackers when you lost consciousness. Your mind doesn't hold the answers I'm looking for." 

Pietro looked from his face to Hank's, then Kitty's, hoping for an out. When they only shrugged apologetically, he gritted his teeth, feeling pressured from all sides. "Fine. But I want to leave after this." 

He begrudgingly stepped forward, dragging his chair with him, and sat within grabbing distance of the old man's wheelchair. 

Charles' soft hand gently cupped his face, spanning the bridge of his nose as he covered both eyes, and Pietro resisted the urge to shudder. He didn't want this, didn't want any of it. And when memories surged to the surface- the rubble of the explosion, Kitty's expressive face falling vacant and slack, Wolf's hands on his hips, his teeth in the other man's lip- it felt as though something were being stolen from him, like his brain was a book the professor could flip through at his leisure. 

After perusing his freshest memories, Pietro felt him digging more deeply into his brain, impatient, forcing tightly shut doors open like he might a bolted-down piece of scrap metal or a particularly resilient scab. 

Suddenly old things, buried things, were rising to the forefront of his thoughts. Lance's smile. Lance's fingers tangled with his. The sheets tenting off Lance's back as he crawled over him, dewy olive skin gleaming in summer moonlight as they moved together with a nearby passing train causing the walls of the apartment to shake. Pillowing his cheek on Lance's chest as he watched his sleeping face, wondering if this feeling was what they called _love,_ and whether someone like him was even capable of feeling such a thing. 

The words, _"Tro, what Kitty and I have is_ different... " 

_No,_ thought Pietro, wrenching Charles away from this particular flow of thought. _Leave those alone, no-_

But then he was eight years old again; panting and exhausted, body trembling violently as his father forced him to use his powers, developing them too young, too fast, with chemicals, hormones, light and then radiation therapy. 

_"What use are you to me as just an ordinary boy? Work_ harder!" Magneto growled in his ear, and he was frightened and desperate to prove himself and make the man proud. 

He was watching his sister being pulled away from him by emotionless men in uniform, not a day older than eleven and begging for their indifferent father to help her. 

He was being abandoned at a gas station by the man he called dad. _"I'll find you if I need you,"_ had been the last words he heard from the man for four years. 

Police had been called by concerned employees to address the strange little boy who was hiding between shelves of chips and cookies. _"Where are your parents, kiddo?"_ They'd asked several times. He hadn't known how to answer, so he hadn't said anything at all. He didn't speak for months after the abandonment, not that anybody noticed or cared through foster home after foster home, while Charles started collecting pretty, bright, obedient little mutants in his mansion like prizes from a cereal box. There was no room for broken toy soldiers in his collection. 

_Even my sister, you at least visit,_ Pietro thought, punching his tiny fists again and again into the sensation of _Charles_ that violated every nook and cranny of his brain. _Why am I not good enough? Not to him, not to you... What did I do_ wrong?! 

"- fessor, stop!" A faraway, female voice called. "Professor, you're hurting him!" 

Pietro was once more an adult, strong and trained and capable of taking on the world. The abrupt transition, from drowning in his own childhood to the blinding light of a present-day overhead chandelier made spots dance in his vision and, when he blinked, he realized that he was crying. 

He sat up in his chair and saw Professor Xavier, looking pale and drawn and guilty with a very freaked-out Kitty standing just behind him, pulling his arm away from Pietro. Charles looked at his own palm, as though the tears trapped between his fingers were blood on his hands. 

"I... I'm terribly sorry, Pietro," Charles said, sounding a little dazed. "That was extremely unprofessional of me. Are you alright?" 

Was he _alright?!_

He attempted to leap to his feet, but it was like all the strength had been sapped from his bones. His legs shook and he would have fallen, had Hank not quickly snapped a thick, furred arm around his chest and hauled him upright. 

"Your mind is like a vault," Charles said, as though making excuses. "You expend an enormous amount of energy keeping things compartmentalized. Every trauma survivor's mind copes differently, but yours..." 

"I don't need a fucking _therapy_ evaluation," Pietro snapped, and was disturbed to find his voice still choked with tears. He swiped furiously at his face and willed his voice to steady. "I just need you to stay the hell away from me." 

He wrenched his arm from Hank's grasp and made for the door, but it was as though his very muscles had been turned to strings. He fell shoulder-first against the wall, shaking. 

"You need to rest," Hank said softly. "We have a spare bedroom on this floor. Perhaps I could carry-" 

"I'll walk," he insisted firmly, through gritted teeth. He was already bawling like a baby; he didn't need to be carried like one, too. With a herculean effort he pushed open the library's double-doors, grateful, at least, that no mutant kids were within eyesight, gawking at him like the sideshow freak he clearly was. 

"Very well. Kitty, if you would-" Charles conceded. 

She was there immediately, supporting his arm, though she wouldn't look at him. His pride burned fiercely at her having seen him in such a state. 

He didn't look back at the professor as Kitty carefully escorted him down yet another long, marbled hallway decorated with near priceless art, but as soon as they'd rounded a corner his knees buckled yet again. 

"Pietro!" she yelped, having been dragged down with him. She hopped back to her feet, pulling on his hand. "Come on, I c-can't carry you, you're too heavy." 

Somehow, he mustered the strength to stand. Through force of will alone, they had no further mishaps until she lead him to a bedroom door. Inside was dark, musty smelling, and furnished only with two bare beds. That was all Pietro knew before he was dragged back under into the black swellings of his mind. 

* * *

He woke slowly to total darkness, a serious headache, and a complete memory blank of where he was. Anxiety coursed through him and his hands shot out, feeling in the darkness for some sort of location marker. 

The back of his wrist collided rather painfully with a wall- this room wasn't set up like his own bedroom- and he stifled a curse. He pushed bunched fabric- a blanket?- off his body and swung a leg over the bed to feel for the floor. 

He heard breathing in the dark, and it had him freezing in place as memories of the day before filtered through, unpleasant but welcome, into his sleep-fogged brain. Right. The attack. The mansion. Kitty. 

His fumblings along the wall brought him to a light switch, and searing beams from the overhead lights made him flinch and exacerbated his headache when they illuminated the plain white room. He was relieved to find that he was still dressed; not even his shoes had been removed. He didn't know if he'd be able to cope with being stripped by someone on top of everything else. 

Kitty, curled on her side in the second bed in the room, made a noise of protest and flung an arm over her eyes, but didn't wake. He'd never have admitted it, but the sight of her and the sound of her deep breaths brought with them a sense of relief. Strange. 

He found at the foot of his mattress some folded clothing and, examining them, observed that they were very similar to the boys' X-uniforms, thankfully minus the patches of Xavier's red insignia in the shoulders. With a covert glance to ensure Kitty really was still asleep, he changed from his torn and now filthy club outfit and was pleased to find that these clothes fit fairly well. 

Kitty had a similar outfit on her own bed, along with a selection of hair ties in a dish, and he helped himself to one, pulling his limp hair back from his face and securing it into a very short ponytail with the elastic band. Then, because the way her foot was sticking out of her blankets was starting to annoy him, he straightened the coverlet with a flick of his wrist. 

He needed to leave before this place really made him lose his marbles. But first, food. 

He switched the light back off as he left and shut the door quietly behind himself. The hallways were faintly illuminated by the light of the moon shining through enormous windows. The carpet was so plush that his feet left subtle impressions as he walked. 

It was a while before he found the kitchen- vast and pristine and glittering with modern amenities and enormous appliances. Striding to the walk-in fridge- he needed protein and fat, fast; his body was still shaking from the efforts of the day before- he observed that the time on the microwave read just after four in the morning. No wonder everything was so dark and empty; he'd been asleep for over twelve hours. 

He tried not to moan at the wide selection of food available, enough to feed a houseful of well-behaved mutant soldiers-in-training, and especially pushed thoughts of his own teenage years- slowly starving in a filthy and decrepit house; no water, no heat; that one winter night when Todd had nearly died of hypothermia and they'd all had to pile around him, shoving hot water bottles under his arms and between his legs... 

Thinking about such things was useless. He would eat, and then he would leave the X-Men to their happy and well-stocked lives. 

He shoved a paper plate of tuna-mac into the microwave and busied himself spreading thick gobs of peanut butter on cold pancakes as the plate in the machine spun quietly, then guzzled half a pitcher of iced tea in an effort to chase away his headache. 

He ravenously devoured the fish and pasta before the microwave had finished its cycle and then, finally sated and feeling much better, he pondered what to do. 

He knew he should report in to Fury, but as his phone's battery was dead, that would have to wait. More than anything else, he wanted confirmation that his friends and sister were safe. It was unlikely they were still in the house; Wanda had probably encouraged them to go into hiding in any place Fred could smuggle a fox, a few cats, and a large number of reptiles. 

He supposed step one would be obtaining a charger and seeing who he could get ahold of. 

Quickly cleaning up after himself, Pietro made his way by memory to the front door. If he ran, he should be able to make it across the grounds and vertically over the gate before any alarms sounded. He'd just placed his hand on the doorknob when a muffled voice caught his attention. 

Turning, he saw a light on in the library, and that one of the doors was slightly ajar. He would have ignored it, had he not caught the unmistakable sound of his name. What was being said about him? 

Creeping closer, he pressed to the far wall beside the double-doors to listen. 

"- the Maximoff twins," Hank was concluding. "Toad, Blob, the Smith girl, and Allerdyce; all accounted for." 

"Did Charles manage to pull anything from the kid's head?" Came Logan's gruff baritone. Pietro wrinkled his nose at being called a _kid._ He tried to picture the two men having this casual conversation in the library before the sun even rose and the children woke, their voices having a familiar air that suggested this was a common practice for them. It was a relief to hear, at least, that his friends and sister were accounted for. Even Pyro had apparently managed to keep from getting captured. 

"Yes, unfortunately," Hank sighed. "Pietro was recently attacked by a man bearing the mark of the human extremist organization we've been watching for some time now." 

"The one we've had Goggles and Jean looking into?" 

Hank must have responded non-verbally, but Pietro was unable to make out if he'd shaken or nodded his head. He frowned; he'd been attacked by a human with a mark? His mind drew a blank, until he recalled the tattoo on Wolf's collarbone; something he'd been too preoccupied to pay a lick of attention to, but apparently it had meant something to Charles. He struggled to remember what it even looked like. _Damn..._

"You're holdin' something back," Logan accused. 

"Right. I was getting to that. According to Fury, one of his mutants _is_ missing. He didn't show up to work today- not uncommon, with his history of drinking problems. His home was investigated, and it looks like there was a struggle similar to the one experienced by Pietro and Kitty." 

Pietro cocked his head. There was only one name missing from Hank's list of mutant agents currently employed at SHIELD (though they were attempting to expand the division). His heart sank in dread before it was even confirmed. _Not Lance..._

"Alvers?" 

"Yes, unfortunately. He's been missing since at least yesterday morning. We'd have to confirm with Kitty when she last saw him, but I don't know if that's the best idea right now." 

_Oh, hell._ Pietro closed his eyes and sighed. The idiot had gone and gotten himself kidnapped? _Damn, damn, damn._ He remembered the shock and fear of such a brutal attack. What did they even _want_ with him? He tried not to picture Lance face-down on the floor, a dart protruding from his throat as the strange masked agents swarmed him. His gut sank at the mental image, and he felt ill. 

"Half-Pint would definitely go looking for that punk and probably get herself snatched doing it." 

"Exactly. Callus as it is to say, the Avalanche is Fury's concern. He isn't one of ours." 

A low growl of annoyance left Pietro's throat before he could quell it. Of course Lance wasn't _Charles'_ problem. What else was new? 

Both men in the library fell silent, and Pietro cringed. It hadn't been a particularly loud noise, but of course they both had advanced hearing. He made to bolt when footsteps approached the doors, but then disembodied, ghostly arms emerged from the wall on either side of him, wrapping around his chest and pulling him backwards. He was too shocked to cry out or struggle as he fell through the wall and into the next room over. 

"Come with me," Kitty whispered into his ear, releasing him only to take his hand in hers. 

He did so without question, lacing their fingers together and keeping pace at her side. He was relieved that she'd heard the same news he had; she, at least, would do what needed to be done, however she was planning on going about it. 

They ran silently through an empty classroom, then a bedroom where two boys slept, and then they were in a hallway again. It was surreal, being intangible like this; he felt weightless, and starting from his hand and radiating up his arm were sharp tingles, like the limb had fallen asleep. 

When they made it to the kitchen she climbed atop of the center island, standing between a basket of fruit and a loaf of bread, then looked down impatiently at him until he climbed up after her. 

"Lift me up," she requested, and Pietro did as she asked, gripping her waist and hoisting her as high as he could. Her hands disappeared into the ceiling, and she pulled herself through. A second later she reached down for him and he followed suit, finding himself in yet another bedroom. 

Kitty held a finger to her lips and pointed at the large bed, where he was startled to see the sleeping form of Evan's aunt, Ororo. The weather witch, deep in dreams, rested oblivious to the phantoms observing her. 

Kitty let go of his hand and walked on feline-quiet feet to Storm's vanity, gently pulling open her jewelry box. Pietro frowned. This didn't seem like the best of times to borrow a pair of the woman's infamously gaudy earrings. 

She gingerly moved rings and bracelets out of a velvet-lined drawer, placing them aside one at a time to avoid making noise. Impatiently, Pietro approached, and then startled when he saw his own face from over a decade ago taped to the mirror. He was thirteen and grinning, cheek-to-cheek with Evan in the faded photograph. He remembered the day they'd taken that picture; they'd just made it onto the middle school basketball team, back in the day when they'd believed _best friends forever_ actually meant something. 

He was jolted from his melancholic nostalgia by Kitty tugging on his wrist; she triumphantly held a square of folded notepaper bearing a long series of neatly written numbers and letters; a code of some sort. She pulled him through the desk and supporting wall and, with a final glance at Ororo's photo-strewn vanity, he followed. 

This time, they found themselves in a bathroom. It was small, just a toilet and a sink. Dimly illuminated by a lamb-shaped nightlight, five toothbrushes were lined up in a little cup by the faucet. 

"Okay," Kitty whispered. Her face looked strange, shadowed, in the low yellow light. "I gotta know- are you really doing this with me?" 

"Doing what?" he whispered back. "Just to clarify we're on the same page." 

She looked up at him, resolute stubbornness in her blue eyes. "We're gonna find Lance." 

She spoke with absolute confidence in this. She _would_ achieve this, come hell or high water. "They weren't gonna do _anything!"_ she hissed, voice rising, and he quickly shushed her. "They were just gonna let the same creeps that attacked us have him, and not even tell me?! _Nobody_ does that to people I care about." 

For being just under five foot three, she certainly sounded fierce just then. Pietro found himself thinking he'd rather not be on the receiving end of true Shadowcat anger. 

He considered. "What are we supposed to do, though? We don't know where he is. We don't know what kind of guard they have on him. Shouldn't Fury organize this?" 

"Let me rephrase," she said crisply. "I am _going_ to find Lance. Will you help me, or are you just wasting my time?" 

"I-" Pietro sighed, giving in. He, too, hated the thought of standing by and doing nothing while who-knew-what was happening to Lance. And, knowing now that creeps like Wolf were definitely involved, he didn't like the thought of Kitty going alone, either. "Fine, okay? Yes. I'm with you. _We_ are going to find Lance." _And then I'm gonna kick his ass for worrying us._

She nodded. "Good. Then we're going to steal the X-Jet." 

In her world, it was as easy as that. 

He slipped his hand into hers when she phased through the bathroom door and through another series of bedrooms, feeling like a bit of a creep himself as they tiptoed past sleeping children and teenagers. They were almost through the fourth and final bedroom leading to wherever Kitty was taking them when a girl of about thirteen stirred awake with a creaking yawn. 

She had blush-colored scales instead of skin on her hairless body, and when her eyelids slid open, they did so horizontally. She blinked muzzily at Pietro with slitted, golden pupils. On seeing an unfamiliar and rather large man standing just at the foot of her bed, she did what any sensible child would. She threw her head back and screamed.


	4. Ruffling Feathers

It'd been a while since last Pietro had had the threat of a mansion full of mutants taking him on. He didn't wait for the kid to stop screaming and display any tricks up her sleeves- poisonous fangs, shooting fireballs from her nostrils- frankly, it would take a lot to surprise him these days. Instead, he dove for Kitty, flinging her over his shoulder as he ran. He flinched when it looked as though they were about to smash into the far bedroom wall, but luckily Kitty had them covered and they phased easily through.

Unluckily, the girl's scream had alerted the kids sleeping in the next room as well, who leapt out of bed, attempting to seem fierce despite their pajamas and messy hair. 

"Shadowcat?!" one called incredulously, lowering flaming fists as he gawked at his mentor carted like a sack of flour by the infamous Quicksilver. She waved awkwardly at him as Pietro took them into the hallway, his free arm pinning the backs of her thighs down. 

"Go up," she hissed, tugging on his ponytail and pointing to the ceiling as doors up and down the hallway popped open, kids and teachers alike with pillow creases on their faces emerging to gawk in confusion. But they were well-trained soldiers; the gawking wouldn't last long. 

Someone grabbed for him, but their arms passed right through, sending fizzy, carbonation-like tingles up his chest and arm. He shuddered. "Ugh; that feels weird." 

Heeding Kitty's advice, he closed his eyes so he wouldn't see the lines of grabbing and shouting people he ghosted through like spirits. This was too, _too_ weird. Going faster than the speed of sound, he was used to. Being intangible, he could handle. Combining the two made him feel as though he were a ray of light, or molecules of oxygen on the breeze; untethered and ethereal. He could run like this forever and meet no obstacles, run straight off the face of the earth. 

When he was going fast enough, he tilted and ran up the length of the wall, emerging through the ceiling of the fourth floor into a classroom, complete with chalkboard and rows of child-sized desks. This floor, unlike the one below, was still empty and dark. 

"The X-Jet is stationed on the roof. It should be, uh," Kitty consulted her mental map of the place. "Just above Hank's lab. Take a left." 

He did so at a more standard run so she could continue to shout instructions, though he now heard a stampede of feet on the stairs. Phasing through a sturdy, locked door brought them into a small, personal laboratory complete with decontamination shower, burners, clean vials, air vents, and bottles of neatly labeled chemicals. 

A pair of fists pounded on the locked door. "Quicksilver, let Kitty go _now_ or I will blast this door open," a familiar voice bellowed, and Pietro laughed out loud. 

"Hey, Goggles!" he greeted, climbing onto Hank's desk and ignoring the documents he crunched under his boots doing so. "It's been a while." 

"Scott, don't be stupid," Kitty snapped. "You fire your eyes in here and the whole place will blow." 

This gave him pause, but only for a moment. "Stand back son," a gruff voice ordered, and silver claws sliced through the door like it was butter. 

"Oh hell," Pietro muttered for the second time that night. Rolling his shoulder so that Kitty was now in his arms, he threw her upwards with all the force he could and sent her sailing through the ceiling, then reached up for her hand, but Logan was on him before she could grab it. 

"I don't think so, bub," Logan growled, pinning his arms to his side and holding his feet several inches above the floor. Damn, the man was strong. His metal skeleton locked like a pillar around him, and all of Pietro's struggling didn't budge him an inch. Unable to push off from any surface, he could not run. 

Frustrated and angry, he twisted his head and sank his teeth into the back of the hand closest to his face. He tasted blood, felt the ridges of sheathed claws nestled neatly between Adamantium bones. Logan grunted at the pain, but did not flinch. 

"I heal, kid. There's nothing you can do to me that would make me let go. Now calm down and tell me what you're doing." Sure enough, when Pietro reluctantly relaxed his jaw and spat a mouthful of blood to the side, Logan's skin closed up and smoothed over in a second like nothing had happened. 

From the doorway, Scott watched them, his mouth set in a grim line and his red goggles obscuring any emotion his eyes may have shown. Pietro felt his face heat in embarrassment, feeling helpless. 

"Logan, put him down," Kitty ordered, her head and shoulders visible through the ceiling. 

"You should go," Pietro called up to her. "I'll catch up with you soon." How he was going to do this was yet to be determined. She made a face, but obediently hauled the rest of her body through the lab ceiling. 

"You gonna answer my question?" Logan asked, and squeezed him harder, his tone implying he had all the time in the world to drag this out. Time enough to let the others catch up and contribute to the interrogation. 

Pietro was unable to withhold a small groan. "Where do you _think_ we're going, genius?" He replied, voice strained from his compressed lungs. "To go get Lance, since none of you pricks give a shit about him. You didn't care about us a decade ago; why should you care now?" 

Logan, his face only inches from Pietro's own, regarded him for a long moment, expression as unfathomable as Scott's. 

"If she gets hurt, I'm holding you responsible," he unexpectedly cautioned, and then released him. "I'm trusting you on this." 

Scott let out an indignant, alarmed little squawk, sounding as startled as Pietro felt. _"Logan-"_ he protested. 

"Hush." Logan crossed to the window, parting the shutters and sliding open a glass panel until the scent of morning dew reached them. "She'll do this no matter what we say, and she ain't gonna let us tag along. You know how headstrong she is. I'm not gonna make her go alone." 

When Pietro only stared at him, the professor made an annoyed little sound and an elaborate gesture towards the fire escape just outside. "What, you need me to unroll the red carpet?" 

He didn't wait to be told twice. Bolting for the window, Pietro dove through, taking the metal stairs that wound around the back of the mansion and up to the rooftop two at a time. He followed his ears to the loud, mechanical whirring of an enormous entity coming to life. 

The X-Jet was a contraption of unparalleled majesty and seemed to have a soul all her own. Sleek, smooth, and equipped with tech that would have made the military weep in envy, Pietro had long admired it, and now they were _stealing_ it. Crisp morning air blasted him hard from the twin engines as they whirred deafeningly awake like a giant bird rising from its nest. 

The metallic platform detached from the machine's underbelly and lowered, granting Pietro access to its chrome and leather insides. With a smug grin, he raced across the platform and sat primly on the co-pilot's plush chair. "Miss me?" He asked. 

Kitty was too busy flipping switches and cranking dials to respond, her tongue pinned between her teeth in concentration. He saw a small access panel with a keyboard pulled free, and beside it, the paper stolen from Storm's room. 

"Type that code in, will you?" she asked. "It's basically a safety lock to keep kids from stealing the jet again. She changes it all the time." 

Pietro snorted. _Again._ He did as asked, and there was a shudder throughout the jet as it powered fully on. "You sure you know how to pilot this thing?" He asked as the wheels began spinning, taking them towards the runway. "I've heard horror stories about your driving." To emphasize, he secured the five-point harness about his chest, snapping the buckles into place. 

_"I'm_ licensed to do this," she snapped hotly. "So you can just hush up." 

His adrenalin was surging; he could do nothing but laugh until it felt like his sides would split. 

A comm radio to his left crackled, and then Charles' voice came through. "Don't do this, Kitty." 

"I'm not listening to you right now, professor," she replied, standing in her seat to reach a switch that caused a gate at the edge of the roof to part. "Unless you're offering to help me." 

"Katherine," he snapped, and sounded impatient even over the static. "Don't be foolish. We can't afford to waste resources for just one mutant who doesn't even work for-" 

"Nope. Not listening." Her jaw was set, her blue eyes steely. She didn't so much as look at the radio when she reached her hand through it, fingers curling around internal wires that audibly snapped. The device fell silent, nothing more than smoking plastic. Pietro's eyebrows shot into his hairline. _Damn._

She jerked her controls, and the jet turned at a forty-five degree angle, climbing the ramp faster than likely was advisable. Pietro's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as he was thrown back in his seat, yet somehow the grin never left his face. If he was about to splat through Xavier's prized rosebushes, well, at least it would be an interesting way to go. 

He couldn't keep himself from whooping as the jet's wheels left the ground entirely, throwing them like a dart off the roof. "Oh, shit!" he screeched, grinning like a madman as he felt the drop in his stomach when they fell, fell, and then, like a hook jerking in their sternums, leveled out. "Oh, man!" 

Kitty glanced at him, amused by his exuberance. Egging it on, she shot into the sky until they were nearly vertical and still climbing through the clouds, leaving Xavier's student body standing in the grass field and gawking up at them. "Lance hates flying," she snorted. "Pukes every time." 

"I _love_ it," Pietro replied with such sincerity that it partially sobered him as Kitty found a good altitude and things began to smooth out again. What was he thinking, acting like this was a fun mission with a trusted partner? It was anything but. He cleared his throat and straightened in his seat, watching the clouds flow softly underneath. Behind them, the sun was slowly rising, coloring their world a hazy pink and orange. 

Finally, they'd stabilized enough for Kitty to enable autopilot and then fall back in her seat, releasing a deep breath. Despite its ponytail, her hair had gotten thoroughly mussed, and she loosened it, only to twist and secure it into a tight, practical bun. "Wow, what a morning," she wheezed. 

"You're telling me. Dare I ask where we're even going?" 

He hoped she had an actual answer, and they weren't very likely facing prison sentences for nothing. Especially considering prison for their kind tended more towards being cryogenically suspended than the traditional bars-and-orange-jumpsuits variety. 

"Well..." she trailed off, an apologetic, cringing smile gracing her face. 

Pietro groaned. "Unbelievable. All this trouble for Lance _freaking_ Alvers. Fantastic." 

"Well it's not like we had time to make a plan!" she snapped. "You had to go and wake Ayesha up with your loud feet." 

_"I_ woke her up?! _You_ knocked into her bed!" 

"How is that even possible? I was intangible. _And_ you got caught, might I add. How did you even get away from Logan?" 

Pietro made a face at her, but answered, "He just let me go." 

She blinked at him, looking as taken aback as he had felt. "Well that's... out of character." 

"You're telling me." 

They sat in silence for a few moments, each trying to think of where this impromptu plan took them next, before Charles got the bright idea to send a fleet of helicopters to shoot them down. Pietro wouldn't put it past him. After all, _Kitty_ would be able to survive it. 

"Hell," she finally muttered, and rubbed at her tired-looking face. The skin under her eyes looked bruised, and Pietro couldn't help but wonder whether she was still feeling the effects of yesterday's dart. "I'm hungry. I'm gonna go see if there's any food in Scott's emergency bag." 

She unbuckled herself and exited the cockpit. Left to his own devices, Pietro let himself up as well and paced around, finding a manual underneath her seat and speed-reading it as he familiarized himself with the jet's inner workings. He plugged his phone into the dashboard to charge and was using the same keypad he'd entered Storm's code in to check its destination history by the time Kitty returned. 

"What are you doing?" she asked, mouth full of granola bar, and handed him a lukewarm water bottle before poking at the manual he held. "I never read those. Boring." 

"Logan said that Gray and Summers had been to wherever this organization is recently," he replied, and shot her a disdainful glance. No wonder she and Lance got along so well; they were both impulsive morons. "And based on the helicopters that attacked us, they can't be too far away. Those fuel tanks weren't sized for a big trip, so we can rule out-" here he tapped the screen showing nothing but numbered coordinates. "Cuba, Berlin, and... Laos? What the hell were you guys doing in Laos?" 

"I don't know!" She took a meditative bite of her granola bar. "I don't always tag along for X-Men stuff, you know. I have a life." 

"And that life includes... working at a coffee shop?" 

She shrugged, inexplicably looking a little embarrassed, and subtly changed the subject. "That's smart of you. To check the flight history. I didn't think of that." 

"Two compliments from the great Shadowcat in two days? Catch me as I swoon." 

"You know, if you were less of a jerk, people would probably like you more." 

"Oh golly gee, I'll keep that in mind next time and I'm sure I'll make a billion friends." He kept scrolling; some coordinates were repeated too often to be any special mission, and he mentally crossed those off the list of possibilities. 

Kitty strode towards him- he could smell chocolate chips from her granola on her breath when she ducked her head underneath his arm to stare at the tiny screen with him. He let out a huff of annoyance, but stepped back and then leaned over her as he continued scrolling. She really _was_ small. 

"That's not it," she said, pointing at one. "And that one; I remember those. We were just going to watch Alex's surfing competitions." 

He mentally crossed off those possibilities as well. They were narrowing the list down to only a few, and hope flared anew. Maybe they could manage this after all. 

"What's this one?" She asked, pointing to a long series of numbers and decimals. "I don't recognize that country code." 

It'd been bothering him, too. He shifted his chin on her shoulder as he frowned at it. "I think... it's an island? Must be a tiny one. Looks like it's off the coast of Alaska." 

"Huh..." she cocked her head, and he made a face after getting a mouthful of hair. "Do you think...? Or, the Texas one? I think those are our best bets. If I were hiding some shady stuff I'd do it in the middle of the Rio Grande. Lots of empty space." 

"I'll keep that in mind when you become a supervillian," he mumbled, and felt her cheek twitch against his neck when she smiled. "We'd better make a choice soon," he added, more seriously. "We don't have infinite fuel; we can't just keep flying without a direction." 

Here she shrugged and turned to leave, awkwardly putting them face-to-face before he moved an arm from the console. She didn't step aside, only reached to cup his cheek in her hand. 

"Your bruise is almost gone," she observed. "It's all yellow. Do you have a healing factor?" 

"Not like Logan's," he replied, half his attention still on the coordinates. "Everything just works faster for me. Feel my heartbeat." 

Without a trace of shyness, she moved a palm to his chest. Her eyes widened when she felt the hummingbird thrum under his skin. "Is that _healthy?_ That's- why are you staring at me like that?" 

"Shush," he covered her mouth. "Shh, shh, let me think." Recalling the punch he'd taken to the face was bringing something up in his memory, but it felt slippery, like he could lose it any second. He recalled his head glancing off the brick wall. What had that man called him? 

_"мутант."_ Of course. The blonde man he'd killed was Russian. Pietro didn't speak much of the language, but he'd been called that word so often in so many different dialects that he knew exactly what it meant. 

"Kitty," he hissed, and squeezed her face hard between his palms until her cheeks and lips bulged pufferfish-style. "Kitty, I'm a genius. I figured it out." 

"And sho humble, too," she replied, not even stopping him from continuing to mush her face. "What ish it?" 

"It's not Alaskan. It's a tiny Russian island. _Trust_ me on this. That's where Lance is." Ecstatic, he grabbed her and zipped her over to the pilots' seat, depositing her into her chair. "Come on, come on, you have to turn us around. Why are you so _sloooow."_

She looked a bit bemused, but obligingly switched off autopilot and began maneuvering the jet as ordered. "I hope you're right, because crossing state lines is a huge pain. There's a ton of checkpoints we're gonna have to scoot around so we don't get some fun military company." 

"Sure! Whatever!" He was still riding the high of a puzzle solved too much to pay attention to the technicalities. "Just do your pilot thing, cap'n." 

Unable to hold still, he left the cockpit and raced through the rows of passenger seats, climbing on chairs and bouncing off again as he tried to work off a burst of energy in an enclosed space without becoming claustrophobic. 

Finding the pillar Ororo strapped herself to during combat, he hopped onto the platform and snapped the white buckle around his waist, hitting a lever that propelled him through the top of the jet and into the sky. He gasped in awe at seeing the world above the clouds, the tall buildings and greenspaces of New York far below him. When he instead started gasping from thinning air and shivering violently from cold air buffeting him hard, he quickly lowered himself back into the jet. This tech was incredible; air pressure in the cabin remained stable throughout the entire exchange. 

In a cabinet he found what must have been Scott's emergency kit; a duffle bag containing everything from spare pairs of red visors to blankets, books, non-perishable snacks, and- he raised an eyebrow- a bag of condoms. The boy scout was clearly prepared for any emergency. Stealing the mp3 player and a couple condoms, he reemerged into the cockpit and hooked the device up to the speakers. He doubted Summers had decent taste in music, but it was better than silence. 

"Having fun?" Kitty asked acridly, and he grinned, nodding. 

"Surprisingly, yes." Ripping a condom from its wrapper, he breathed into it until it inflated like an electric blue balloon, then tied it off and tossed it into the air, where it fluttered slowly downwards. He repeated the process with red, green, and yellow tubes of latex as the familiar strains of the Pina Colada song filled the cockpit. "We're having an impromptu _Stole a Jet and Going to Russia to Rescue Your Stupid Boyfriend_ party." He released a candy-pink condom-balloon which fluttered around, burbling flatulently. She snorted as she batted it away. 

"Kitty," he said seriously, and she turned to look at him. "Do you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain?" 

She shrugged affably. "I'm not into health food; I am into champagne." 

Hearing her laugh felt like the first good thing that had happened to Pietro in days. 


	5. Hot Blooded

So as it turned out, flying from New York to Russia was _boring,_ and Kitty's tuneless humming and the way she intermittently drummed her nails on the console or brought them to her mouth to _chew_ \- gross- was putting Pietro in a pretty foul mood. He hadn't considered the full ramifications of being stuck in a metal tube long-term with her, and now she was beyond on his nerves. 

Having exhausted their entire supply of condoms-as-balloons to throw at her, Pietro paged through each book Scott had left behind (all murder mysteries wherein the detective was grizzled but handsome and deceptively intelligent, and attracted many women who usually turned out to _be_ the killer). 

"Y'know," he said through a mouthful of pilfered beef jerky. "Only fifteen percent of all serial killers are female. Someone should probably tell famous Swedish authors that." 

"Or we could up it to sixteen percent," Kitty muttered darkly, glaring at the way his boots were crossed on the jet's console. "You're like a little kid." 

Pietro grinned and threw the book behind him, heedless of where it landed. "You think so?" Arguing with her would be more fun than passing the next few hours in absolute silence. "Little kid or not, you don't have it in you to kill me. You'd go all good-guy at the last second and pat yourself on the back, thinking mercy is honor when really it's just cowardice wearing a pretty hat." 

She wasn't taking the bait. Turning up her nose at him, she returned her focus to the air controls. 

Where was the fun in _that?_

Scooting as close as his chair would permit, he looked intently at her face, memorizing every freckle, taking note of a tiny crescent-shaped scar by her left eye and the straight lines of her slightly-chapped lips, observing how her long hair needed a trim to fix some split ends. She bore this attention for an admirable three and a half minutes before cracking. 

_"What?!"_ she demanded, turning her glare upon him. 

"Wanna make out?" he asked expressionlessly, emotionlessly, though it was hard not to smile at the startled, then offended, expressions that crossed her face. Too easy. 

"No!" she sputtered, and to his delight her face visibly heated to a rose-color. "Why would you- what-" 

He shrugged, infamous motor mouth making an appearance. "Apparently Lance likes to. I just wondered what the appeal was. Aren't you curious about whatever he liked about me? _It's not for my personality, that's for sure.'"_ This last part was said in a bad falsetto mimicry of her own voice. 

Her expression went from merely flustered annoyance to truly pissed off in a second as his words processed, and the heat of her glare cooled into frostburn. "You're a pig," she said. "I have no idea what he saw or sees in you." 

Here Pietro laughed, entertained by her anger. "Oh honey, don't you see?" he asked, and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning as far back as the copilot chair would allow. "He never saw anything in me. I was just a warm mouth to use til he could get into your lacy pink-" 

"Stop." 

He was really striking all her nerves now. He'd found an exposed one, and he mercilessly stomped it, wondering if he could actually make her cry. It was only fair- he was still sore about how she'd seen him bawling the day before. He gestured a hand in a lazy, _go on_ gesture. 

"He loves you. He's not... like that. If you'd seen how torn up he was when you left him-" 

And with that, the bickering lost all entertainment value. _"I_ left him?! Excuse me, princess, but if he was feeding you some bullshit story to make himself look like the victim, let me make one thing crystal clear. He left me for you. He _chose_ you. He's always chosen you- when we were teens up to present day, whenever you gave him the time of day it was like nobody else mattered. And now that he has you, everything he's done ever since is just his faithless ass wondering if he's made the right choice, wondering if he should leave you for someone else just like he did to me." 

He closed his mouth with a triumphant click as she gaped at him, wide-eyed, the stupid expression on her face only fanning his years worth of accumulated resentment. "In fact," he said, struggling to regain control over his tone. "If you want my advice, we should turn this jet around. Take it back to Daddy Charles, get our slaps on the wrist, and let whoever has Lance do whatever they want. He's not worth the-" 

He could have stopped it from happening- although she was fast, he was Quicksilver- but he allowed her to crack him hard across the face with her open palm, throwing his head back with the force of her slap. 

"Liar!" she snarled, hand raised to strike again. He held his stinging cheek, startled into silence. "If you really thought he wasn't worth it, you wouldn't be here. Take your pissy attitude out on me all you like, but don't you lie to me or to yourself. You care. You're just pretending you don't because it'll make it hurt less if he's already-" Her lip trembled, and her eyes shone; he'd managed to make her cry after all; the victory was less satisfying than he'd expected. "If he's already _dead."_ She forced the last word, though her voice broke on it. "God, just when I was starting to think you were a decent person." 

Turning on her heel, she left the cockpit for a small side-room, presumably the toilet. Pietro wasn't possessed of superhearing, but he suspected that if he was, he would've heard a sob through the door. 

Huh. 

The skin she'd hit was warm; he wondered if she'd managed to leave a handprint on his face. He wouldn't have thought she was the slapping type. 

Scott's mp3 player had cycled through all of its tracks and was back on the Pina Colada song; the transition drew his attention to where his and Kitty's phones were plugged in to charge. The little black window on the front of his flipphone was showing life again.

_One unheard message,_ the tiny font informed him, and he groaned. He'd made it through most of Lance's babbling, but it looked like it wasn't over yet. 

His pale eyebrows disappeared into his hairline when he opened the phone and saw, on the little indicator, exactly how long the message was. _Forty-three minutes._ What the hell, Lance?! That was beyond pathetic, even for him. 

Typing in his passcode, he set the thing on speaker, propped his heels back up on the dash, and closed his eyes to listen. 

It started the way the other messages had- barely coherent ramblings about their relationship, his concern for Pietro, his _anger_ at Pietro (said coherency dropped as he talked; he was entering rapidly into the stages of _very, very drunk)_ when something unexpected happened. 

There was a faint crash, and then Lance fell silent. Pietro could hear him breathing into the receiver. 

"Hello?" he called, and he wasn't speaking directly into the phone now. "Uh, is- _whoa!"_

Another crash, from much closer. There was a thud, presumably as his phone was dropped, and a grunt. Some more silence, then a distanced scuffle. 

"Let _go_ of me, man!" Lance barked, and then there was the familiar rumbling noise of seismic waves underway. Pietro heard unfamiliar masculine voices call out in alarm. There was another, sharper thud, and the unmistakable yelp of Lance in pain. 

The rumbling stopped. 

More grunts and thumps- clearly, some harsh fight was going on- but all fell silent when the gut-twisting _bang_ of a shotgun rang out, near-deafening even through his phone's tiny speakers. Lance's labored breathing sounded nearby- had he fallen close to the phone?- And there was a faint, repressed whine of pain trapped in his throat with every breath. He was hurt, and bad- Lance was too stoic to let anything less than _catastrophic_ show; even while drunk. 

"C'mere, Muttie," laughed a familiarly deep male voice, and Lance hissed as he was dragged away from the phone. "Aw, your ugly face is all bloodied up. It's a good look for you." 

Another thud, followed by Lance's grunt of pain. The bastard had punched him while he was down. There was scattered male guffaws- Pietro counted at least four different voices. 

Lance made a soft, rather wet choking sound, and Pietro frowned. What were they- 

"I'd love to see what else that pretty mouth can do. Especially with you scowling at me like that the whole time. Don't make me want you, sweetheart." The same low male voice had become slighly breathier, and a chill shot up Pietro's spine as he was made to understand. "You know, he's not really my type, but that pissed-off look in his eyes is _really_ working for me."

His stomach roiled. He didn't want to hear _this-_

"Cut it out, Wolf." Another voice- this one thick with a Russian accent. "That's enough; we don't have time to fool around all night." 

_Wolf?!_ Of course. Pietro seethed, grinding his teeth. He should have recognized the voice immediately. 

"Aw." Pietro could almost hear the little grin in his voice. "We're leaving so soon? You got lucky, Muttie." 

Whatever he did made Lance yelp again. Evidentially, they'd pulled him to his feet, because a third voice chortled, "He can't even _stand,_ he's drunk off his ass!" 

The voices faded as they dragged Lance to the door. Pietro sat up, knuckles white as they gripped the dashboard and stared at his phone. Eighteen minutes remained on the call; he watched them drag by, slow as molasses, the number getting smaller and smaller as there was nothing but silence. 

Finally, the line went dead. 

Pietro wondered if he needed to evacuate Kitty from the bathroom so that he could use it to be violently ill. 

Instead he stood, walked over to the pilot's seat, and sat, staring at the expanse of sky above them and the eastern United States below- beetle-sized cars on ribbon-sized roads bringing perspective and distance to the universe. He tried to breathe hard through his nose, shoving the feelings that phone call had evoked back, deep into his brain where he kept all of the nasties, far enough that he no longer felt anything at all. 

His breathing and heart rate had returned to normal by the time Kitty emerged again from the bathroom, red-eyed but composed. 

"You changed course," she observed, looking down at the coordinates panel. "Why?" 

Oh, so she wasn't going to address the argument they'd just had. That was probably for the best. Already he was beginning to regret the harshness of his words, the desire he always had to pick at people until they were as raw as he. 

"We don't have enough weaponry," he explained. He'd checked out the ship's weapons- and it was packing some pretty heavy stuff- as well as the stockpile of various manual goodies Scott had stored away behind the supply bag- but nothing especially useful for a stealth mission. "I'm taking us to one of my dad's old shareholds. We're going to stock up." They'd need medical supplies too; Lance's yelps of pain were still playing on a loop somewhere in the back of his mind. But he couldn't say that unless he wanted to be questioned, and if she couldn't handle some ribbing, she certainly couldn't handle _that_ voice message. 

"Magneto?!" 

"That would be the only father I have, unfortunately, so yes." 

"How do you know he won't be there?" She was ogling at him anxiously, and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

"Last I heard, he's hermiting it up in the Polish countryside; his only neighbors are the occasional sheep. But you didn't hear that from me, and if Charles suddenly goes looking for him, I'll know you squealed." 

He waited for her to sarcastically hold both palms up in supplication, looking more than a little fed up with him, before continuing. "This is the house I grew up with Wanda and my m- and. Both of my parents. It's pretty old, but it's where he stored some of his best gear." 

He'd been pretty damn tiny during his time at this place; back when things had still been happy. It felt odd to be returning now. "Hope you're ready for this," he said, and didn't know if he was talking to Kitty or to himself.


	6. Something Different

Lance didn't lose consciousness, not once. Not as he was thrown into a truck, driven several miles to a helicopter, forced at gunpoint to allow them to gag his mouth and tie his hands behind his back, and finally deposited into the cargo hold. He was still so fuzzy from alcohol that everything had a surreal, dreamlike quality to it and he struggled to remain upright. 

He was told that the first seismic rumble they felt would be his last, and the pistol pressed harder into his temple for emphasis. "You know we don't _need_ you _alive_ for this," they reminded him several times over. He could only groan when the others left him behind with a short, compact woman wearing dark sunglasses. There was a knife in her belt and another at her ankle, but it was a .44 she kept leveled at his head, her steady hands unwavering even as she crossed the narrow hold and sat primly on a crate. 

He sobered as they flew, his back and calves aching from his constant crouched position. They must have been in the air for a very long time because they stopped, once, to refuel. That was the only time his female kidnapper moved, coming close once again to press her gun to his jaw as though he might have taken the opportunity to run for it. He tried to read her eyes through the sunglasses, but saw only twins of his own reflection in their mirrored surface, looking sweaty and scared. "Mmmf," he told her, widening his eyes in urgency. 

"Quiet," she growled, her English flavored subtly with an accent. 

He remained conscious at their inevitable landing, and the stillness that followed, before he was pulled roughly from the cargo hold and escorted onto a landing strip. He couldn't see much in the darkness, but he smelled salt water, heard the crashing of waves. Then, with agents flanking him from every side, he was escorted down a number of steps to what looked like a large, brightly illuminated hospital. 

In the entryway, he was manhandled to a makeshift tarp held up by four poles and stripped unceremoniously of his clothes. When he let out several loud _Mmmfs_ of protest, he felt the growing familiarity of the press of a pistol to the back of his skull. After that, he endured the indignity in silence. 

Once he was naked, he was ushered onto a platform, and a clear plastic curtain came around him. "Close your eyes," someone warned, before several overhead spouts began blasting him with viscous, astringent orange fluid that stung upon contact. 

He endured this, eyes screwed tightly shut, before the mystery liquid glugged to a halt and different taps rinsed him with a much weaker spray of water. When he dared open his eyes again, he saw large chunks of hair- his own, long brown hair- clogging the drain. Glancing at his reflection in the shiny tap, he saw that it was coming out by the handful. He was unable to contain a single, sharp, "Mmf!" of alarm. 

When hot air began to blast him from several dryers, more of his head and body hair fluttered loose, leaving him bald as a sphinx cat. His skin was beginning to itch, and when he was hauled from the showers, he scowled daggers at all who watched him. 

The same female agent that had held him at gunpoint in the helicopter ignored this as she passionlessly slung a white robe around his shoulders and belted it at his waist, leaving the long sleeves to dangle free, before reaching behind his head to pull the damp gag from his mouth. He worked his jaw, feeling the corners of his lips that had been chafed raw. 

"Why am I here?" he asked, tongue dry from hours of being held to fabric. 

"No talking, мутант," she barked, and yanked his jaw open, looking all his teeth over so that he felt like a show pony. When she released him, satisfied with whatever she'd found in his mouth, she put an arm on his shoulder and escorted him, barefoot, through a series of twisting hallways. Air passing over his bald and madly itching and tingling scalp was terrible, but his hands weren't free to scratch it. 

They reached a windowless, circular main area, where each wall was lined by cells approximately five by eight feet in size. Each cell held two prison-like bunks, a toilet, and two occupants dressed like him, who had evidentially received the same treatment as he. They too had eerily alien faces devoid of eyebrows or lashes. Some of the faces looked vaguely familiar, but it was difficult to be certain in this dim lighting as they all blinked silent and watchful as owls at him. 

The final cell contained only one occupant: a woman sitting with her back to the curved wall, head lolling to the side with her eyes closed. She was so still that for a moment, Lance feared she was dead before noting the faint rise and fall of her sunken chest. The woman beside him unlocked the barred door with a keycode she typed into a wall panel too rapidly to memorize, and it rolled silently open. 

"Thought you might enjoy the friendly reunion," his captor smirked, and shoved Lance forward into the girl's cell. He stumbled and, unable to catch himself, landed shoulder-first against the far cement wall. 

The girl opened red-rimmed eyes, looking bleary with exhaustion, and focused her gaze on him as he straightened up. Her dry lips parted. 

"Lance," she whispered hoarsely, and then he knew with sinking clarity exactly who she was. 

"Rogue?" 

She was emaciated to the point of being unrecognizable, her white legs and arms blooming with bruises and her collarbone jutting from the neck of her robe like a handle. 

He made to cross the small space and go to her, but was pushed back as their captor reached her first and seized her roughly by the upper arm. She whimpered, but offered no resistance as she was wrenched to her feet. 

Lance snarled and lunged for her. "Don't you touch her!" he growled. Their jailor rolled her eyes as if such theatrics were beneath her and, before Lance could reach them, she'd produced a baton from her belt and slapped its tip onto Lance's chest. 

For a moment, Lance was sure he'd died. 

Massive volts of electricity shot through his veins, boiled his marrow, made his joints jerk and dance like a broken puppet's. He couldn't tell if he was screaming, or if that was all just in his head. 

When he came to, he was flat on his back on the floor, drool spilling down his chin and phantom spasms still wracking his body. Everything felt bruised, inside and out. He was suddenly grateful he'd voided his bladder in the showers, as surely that would have forced him to lose control of it. 

Rogue and the woman were gone, and when he tried the sliding door with his foot, it remained in place. Locked. _Damn it._

"Get up, kid. Yer okay." 

Lance startled at the familiar voice, head rolling to the side in the general direction it had emanated from. At first he saw nothing, but when his eyes focused, he made out two faces watching from the cell across the room. The first was a stranger, but the second- 

"You're the Wolverine." It was a little difficult to speak; his tongue felt thick in his mouth, and everything smelled burnt to him as he slowly, carefully, made to sit up. 

"What's left of me." The gruff X-Men professor chuckled darkly, and Lance followed his gaze down his similarly robed body to where his leg ended at a stump just above the knee. His robe hung too lose over the absence of limb. The distinct smell of blood, and the much fainter tang of new infection, began making itself known. 

"Be glad yer not a healer, kid. They take chunks every day." 

Lance barely made it to the cell's tiny toilet in time, heaving up whatever sour whiskey was left in his stomach. It felt like he was there forever, wracked with one shuddering gag after another. When he was finally able to turn back to the cell across the way, he saw that the second man- pale as ivory, wide-eyed as an insect- was still watching him unnervingly. He looked more at home in these cells than any of the other people Lance had seen thus far. 

"My name is Caliban, Mr. Alvers," he introduced himself. "You might know me as a member of the Morlocks." 

_Morlocks..._ He was dimly familiar with the sewer-dwelling branch of mutants from that one X-Men who had eventually joined them. Spud, or Spike, or whatever his name was. Kitty's friend. 

"They got you guys too, huh?" He asked, not without sympathy. 

Caliban nodded regretfully. "Yes. We were ambushed all at once. It's been weeks now. Had I access to my powers, I could tell you the names of everyone here- it's only mutants; not a human among us- and those who remain free, but that is not possible at this time." 

Lance was about to question this, but the sound of a heavy door swinging open silenced him. Footsteps approached his cell, and then the imposingly large figure of Wolf loomed above him. "Brought you a present," he grinned. 

Draped over his beefy shoulder was the disconcertingly still body of Rogue. Lance scrambled to his feet as his cell door was unlocked and opened. 

"Turn around," Wolf ordered. "Try anything and you'll lose a hand." 

Lance gritted his teeth but did as he said, not wanting to be tazed a second time, and flinched when his robe was pulled from his shoulders, leaving him standing bare from the waist up. Whether Wolf used a knife or not, Lance couldn't see, but after a brief moment of pressure, the fabric binding his hands fell away to tatters on the floor. He turned back just in time to get an armful of limp Rogue shoved into his chest. Still wobbly from previous experiences, it was all he could do not to drop her. 

Wolf then pushed him back with alarming strength until his spine collided rather painfully with the wall, crushing Rogue between them. He was tall, standing eye-to-eye with Lance, and broader; clearly he worked out for show-musculature, rather than Lance's smaller muscles won by function and everyday use. He cut quite an intimidating figure, especially with his nose mere centimeters from Lance's own and his iron-strong fingers curling ten little bruises onto Lance's shoulders. 

"Do what we say, follow the rules, and you'll be fine," Wolf said quietly. "Any funny business, and they'll give you to me. And believe me, Earthshaker: I will delight in every moment tearing you apart." 

The loving tone to his whispers and the blatant madness in his deep brown eyes dispelled any notion that he was exaggerating. Lance felt frozen, breathless, until Wolf at last released him and left their cell, slamming the door behind him as he went. 

Then he sank to the ground, Rogue in his lap, and bunched the sleeve around his hand so he could safely tilt her face his way. She made a quiet, mumbling sound, eyes sliding open once more to focus blearily on his. 

"What did they do to you?" Lance asked quietly. She tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. 

"Just took more blood. I'm so tired." Her eyes fluttered closed again and she shifted slightly in his arms, the crown of her bald head brushing his jaw. 

Lance froze, all too familiar with how hazardous touching Rogue's skin was- he'd been on the wrong end of her powers more than once. 

To his astonishment, nothing happened. 

"Like I said," Caliban intoned quietly, still watching them from his cell. "Our powers don't work here."


	7. Hidden Stars

The family Mezuzah was no longer affixed to the front doorpost. Pietro recalled the scroll that blessed their home with an overwhelming surge of nostalgia. He didn't know why he'd expected it to remain in place, but somehow its absence felt like an ill omen.

Kitty followed his gaze to the empty post, looking curious, so he clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Do your thing, Shadowcat," he requested, feeling awkward touching her after the argument they'd just had. If she felt the same way, she didn't show it, but he released her the moment they were inside just the same. 

"Welcome to château Maximoff," he drawled affectedly, breathing in the musty smells of a place far too long unoccupied with none to stir its settling dust. 

"Wow," Kitty remarked, letting the word draw out as her blue eyes darted from the peeling wallpaper, too faded to make out the small sailboats that had once decorated it, to the dropcloth-covered loveseat and recliner. "So this is where you grew up." 

There was no judgment in her tone, but he bristled defensively anyway. It was a little shoebox of a home in upstate Washington where his deeply reclusive mutant parents had ensured the closest neighbors were nearly an hours' drive away, and it was the only place he could remember being truly happy, for however brief of a time. "Let's just find his stash and get out," he said. 

When she started boldly for the only hallway, he instinctively grabbed her by the strap of the empty bag she carried. "Wait. Dad wasn't exactly stable at the best of times; he might have some friendly "presents" scattered around." 

"You mean booby-traps?" she asked, looking around with more interest than alarm. He shrugged. He wouldn't put it past Magneto. 

"Maybe you should go back to the jet," he cautioned. "I'm just gonna speed through and look everywhere." 

"No way! I didn't hike three miles through mushy Washington forest just to be a glorified door-opener," she glared, and he let it go with a sigh. 

"Alright, but if you get blown up it's your fault," he mumbled, and picked his way carefully past the kitchen to the hallway ahead of her. There were only three rooms- the bedroom he'd shared with Wanda, his parents' room, and the bathroom between them. 

Ghosts of memory haunted this tiny space. He saw himself from an outsiders' perspective, small and sullen and raven-haired, timidly clinging onto Wanda's hand as she boldly lead him on adventures. When Kitty sidled next to him and slipped her hand into his, he nearly jumped from his skin, half-expecting to see a little girl with olive skin and hair in inky waves down her back instead. 

"This way we don't trigger any traps," Kitty explained, kindly ignoring his twitchiness and keeping a resolute grip on his fingers. He realized they'd gone incorporeal and grudgingly accepted that it was a smart idea, walking beside her to and then through the first door. 

He tried to view the two child-sized beds, sans mattresses, pushed together with only a table between them through a strangers' eyes. The table had once held a nightlight shaped like an elephant; Wanda complained that it kept her awake, but Pietro had hated darkness in those days. 

Kitty made straight for the wardrobe, becoming solid once more and releasing him to push the drop-cloth aside and try the doors. It was empty aside from a row of pastel hangers that had once held coveralls and jumpers and his favorite sweater with the little green truck embroidered on the shoulder. She rapped her fist lightly on the back like she was looking for a secret passageway, but the feedback rang solid through and through. 

"What's that?" she asked, indicating the larger and more colorful of two drawings on the inside doors. Pietro snorted. 

"A dragon burning a village, obviously," he said, and couldn't stop the wry grin that tugged his lips. "Wanda was always moody; look at the melting civilians! Fine attention to detail. This one was mine." 

He pointed to the other door, where he'd drawn two stick figures. The taller of the two had a triangle for a skirt and black hair in a ponytail, and was holding hands with the shorter in a field of flowers (they resembled fried eggs more than daisies, but he'd been proud of his artwork at the time). 

"What do those words say?" Kitty asked, touching the clumsy Hebrew lettering. 

"Mother," he replied. "But it's spelled wrong. And that- that's my name." He indicated the letters under the smaller stick figure 

She was looking at him with something altogether too soft in her eyes just then, but he didn't want her pity, so he straightened up. "Anyway. There's nothing in here, so come on." 

He held his hand out impatiently, and after a second, she took it and let him help her to her feet. 

The bathroom turned up nothing but long-unfunctioning plumbing and the faintest whiff of No-More-Tears shampoo, reminding him of the songs his mother had sung to him and his sister long ago, self-conscious of her husky voice as they taught her the English words they'd learned in school or on television. She'd never been as proficient at the language as her husband and children, and so she rarely spoke when others were around. 

Wanda asked for illusions at bathtime, and so it was looking at the tub that he had his clearest memories of the way cerulean sparks would dance from his mother's fingertips, morphing and shaping into transparent pirate ships and long-snouted crocodiles. Pietro had found those illusions frightening, despite Wanda's apparent delight, and so they would soften to playful dolphins, sea turtles, and mermaids in expansive coral reefs at his first whimper. 

"No secret passages here, boss," Kitty called, from where she was lying on her back, looking up into the cabinet underneath the sink and poking at the long-empty pipes. "You sure your dad kept a stash at this house?" 

"Pretty sure." But doubt was beginning to raise its ugly head, making him irritable. Had he just wasted precious time and fuel coming here when untold horrors were being conducted on Lance as they spoke? He'd long since given up feigning indifference- that final phone message had robbed him of that luxury. "Come on; one more room, and we'll leave." 

He started for his parents' bedroom, pushing open the door, and was nearly crushed under a falling mass of rubble. Kitty pounced onto his back just in time, knocking him down and allowing the earsplittingly-loud landfall triggered by the door opening to pass harmlessly through them both. 

"What-" he gasped, wide-eyed, as she at last stood and hauled him up by the front of his shirt, bringing his weightless form over the rocks and boulders that had almost demolished the floor beneath them. 

"Looks like you were right about your dad," she said, an eyebrow quirked in what was almost smugness. "Let's hope you're right about the weapons, too." 

She helped him over the landslide, to the relatively undamaged queen-sized bed and night-table across the room. 

"Pietro," she gasped, her fingers squeezing his, but he saw it too. Despite the settling dust, these surfaces looked much fresher than the rest of the house- recently touched. There was even a discarded blanket on the otherwise bare mattress, bunched similarly to the shape of a curled, sleeping person. 

"In Poland with the sheep, huh?" she questioned acerbically, and he frowned. _Had_ his father been here recently? 

Aside from the blanket, the room bore only one personal touch: a framed photo, facedown on the table. Sitting heavily on his mom's side of the bed, Pietro released Kitty's hand, swallowed, and lifted it. 

The photograph was sepia-toned from poor care rather than age, and depicted a professional-quality portrait of a thin, solemn-faced Rromani woman in a conservative dress that covered her from neck to wrist to ankle. Her face was fine-boned with a pointed chin, eyes dark and unreadable. Nestled in the hollow of her throat, over the fabric of her dress, was a miniscule star of David hanging from a chain. 

Pietro recalled the sharp points of that star from his earliest memories, how he'd rolled them over his forearm while she recounted tales in that low voice of hers of the places she and his father had immigrated from. He remembered how she reminded him to always have hope, that God's miracles worked in mysterious ways. He remembered her fingers in his hair, back when it had been as night-black as his sister's, before his father's experiments had bleached it permanently white. 

"Is this your mother?" Kitty asked, snapping him out of his memories. "She has your mouth and jawline." She was studying the image, intrigued, head cocked. And despite the fact that she didn't- couldn't- know the whole story, Pietro suddenly felt as naked and vulnerable as he had when Charles examined his mind. 

"She wasn't always this serious," was the first thing out of his mouth, though he couldn't explain where it had come from. "She was uncomfortable about her teeth- they were kinda messed up- so she never smiled in pictures. But she smiled in real life- really." 

There was an embarrassing urgentness in his voice, a desperate need to convince Kitty, if not himself, that his mother had once been happy. That he had _made_ her happy. He hated himself for such naked weakness. The hatred grew into a panic when she again looked at him with that knowing, warm expression. How pathetic she must think him now. 

She sat down on the bed beside him, bringing her legs up and crossing them, and from her pocket pulled her flip-phone. 

She tapped at her phone for a while. "Look," she said, holding it out to him, and for loss of anything else to do, he took it. 

On its tiny screen, she'd pulled up an image that looked to be set in a hospital room. Tucked into crisp white sheets of a half-reclined bed was a man roughly in his early sixties. A clear tube was inside his nose, supplying oxygen. He had no hair, and a series of machines around him printed constant streams of vital-sign reports. 

Beside him stood a woman, short and plump and soft-looking, with curly brown hair shot through with the occasional stripe of gray. Her tired-looking brown eyes were crinkled in a half-smile, but even in the small and pixilated image, the redness of recent tears was visible in her smile. 

"Those are my parents," Kitty said. "My father is dying of inoperable brain cancer. He has anywhere from three days to three months to live." 

She delivered this matter-of-factly, like she was reading a report, but the clench of her jaw, the fire in her eyes, showed what such an admittance cost her. She was hurting. This was, what Fred had coined, a _person_ moment- amended from _human_ moment, after they'd reminded him that they were none of them human. She was trying to connect with him on a personal level, and it was up to him whether to reject or accept her pain, to trade it with some of his own. 

He fought it, but in the end, he closed his eyes in a silent defeat. 

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, handing the phone back, and meant it. Then, "Maybe someday I can tell you about my mother." 

She nodded seriously, re-pocketing her phone. "I'd like that." 

The frame made a slight chiming sound- metal against metal- when he set it upright on the table. He frowned. "Was that-" 

"It looks like there's something in the frame," Kitty said, frowning, and after she said it, he could see the small bulge in the photo-paper. 

Lifting it again, he turned it around and undid the four small latches that kept the frame to the wooden back, setting it aside. Written on the photo's yellow back in his father's crisp penmanship was the year 1939, and hidden underneath was the pendant of his mother's Magen David. 

Pietro leapt to his feet. "Up," he said, tugging at Kitty's arm. "Up! Help me move the bed!" 

Eyes wide, she did as directed, helping him move the heavy mattress, box-spring and all, as far to the right as they could. "I don't get it," she panted, as he stood stock still, eyes roving the floor for anomalies. 

"Use your big brain," he retorted, finally kneeling and feeling along a crack in the faux-wood until he reached a knothole. "What happened in 1939 that would be of significance to my father?" 

She frowned in thought, before it dawned on her. "Nazis invaded Poland." 

"Bingo." He found what he was looking for and, after some scraping and fumbling, inserted the side of the pendant into the woodgrain. He felt something catch, and turning the thing like a key made tumblers slide like butter. With a satisfying click, a person-sized trapdoor sprang into being and opened silently on well-oiled hinges. 

"Mom was always on him about building a secret bunker," he explained. When both of your Jewish immigrant parents grew up in countries and families ravaged and desecrated by the Shoah, they tended to think about this stuff. "I just never knew he actually went through with it. He must have left that photo for me or Wanda." 

And what an odd thought _that_ was. Since when had their father spared any amount of thought for them?

The door opened outwards to the beginnings of a wooden ladder that quickly disappeared into darkness. "You down there, dad?" he called cautiously and, receiving no answer, shrugged at Kitty and started down. He was no longer afraid of the dark; that had been left behind in childhood, as he'd quickly discovered there were much worse things to fear. 

He reached the bottom sooner than he expected, and glanced up at Kitty when his boots hit the dirt ground. It smelled earthy, and was humidly warm despite the darkness. He brushed something with his ankle, and when he bent to lift it he saw that he held a flashlight. 

"Come on down," he called. "It's safe." 

Hearing Kitty uncertainly start her own descent, he aimed the flashlight- the batteries still worked- around the small space. It was a perfect underground cube carved into the ground and sustained with metal plating, just large enough for two adults- _two Maximoff twins-_ to live, if not comfortably, then at least safely for some time. He had to crouch a little; Lance would have had to practically stoop to fit. But there was food- canned- and water in plastic barrels. He saw also where the mattresses from their childhood beds had gone. 

"I can't believe he did this," he muttered, shining his light on the stack of moth-eaten blankets. It wasn't a normal display of fatherly concern, for sure, but it was more than he'd ever shown in Pietro's life. 

"No kidding." Kitty stumbled into the side of a large wooden crate and swore softly. "What's in this thing?" 

He turned the flashlight onto the crate and pushed the hinged lid open to reveal a space wide and deep enough to comfortably sleep stretched out inside, had it been empty. 

"I think," he said faintly, peering into the cache of weapons- machine guns, wickedly sharp knives of varying lengths, grenades, magazines of bullets, holsters of blatantly illegal gasses, and metallic objects he couldn't even recognize- "That this would be a good time to say 'jackpot.'" 

The heavy canvas bag couldn't hold everything, so they just took what looked most useful, filling the it with all they could carry- a strap over Pietro's shoulder and a strap over Kitty's. 

She stopped him as they were leaving, bending awkwardly to pluck the pendant from the floor and hand it to him, then taking the photograph of his mother in her free hand. 

As they walked back to where they'd left the jet, Pietro, growing annoyed with his wrist continually grazing hers, growled and seized her hand. 

"Stop smiling," he snapped, after a moment of silence. 

"I'm _not!"_ she lied innocently, lacing their fingers together. 

They walked the rest of the way in near-companionable silence.


	8. Bone Growth

They were left to their own devices for an indeterminate length of time. It seemed an eternity, but without clock or windows, measuring the hours proved difficult. 

Eventually, the monotony was broken by a young guard pushing a wheeled cart piled high with crockery. He guiltily avoided their stares when he began handing out plastic trays of food, as though he would see only horrors should he dare look up from his ladle. Lance counted eight more trays stacked on his cart, but didn't know if that gave him an accurate estimate of all the captive mutants. 

He swirled his plastic spoon through a gluey lump of white rice with gravy and bits of turkey, watching as Logan and Caliban chowed down with mixed enthusiasm. Rogue, whom he'd settled into the lower of the two bunks, picked uninterestedly at hers. 

"You should eat," he said softly, glancing her way. "You look..." here he trailed off. Reminding her of her skeletal appearance seemed an unkindness. It was still bizarre to be able to touch her. He flinched every time their close quarters had them knocking elbows or shins but, having immediately tested their words, he'd found he was unable to so much as make a pebble hop, let alone wreak destruction with seismic quakes. They were well and truly powerless in this forgotten place at the end of the world. 

"I will," she assured him. "It just takes me a while." As though placating a child, she brought a spoonful to her mouth and swallowed. The action looked painful. 

Finishing his own portion, Lance followed Logan's example and slid both tray and spoon back under his cell door. 

"So," he said, watching the X-Men professor hobble to a seated position, using Caliban's shoulder for balance. "You can't heal in here?" 

"Obviously." 

Caliban offered a sympathetic grimace. "They take him out to heal when they want a new tissue sample." 

"You mean when they want to hack something else off." There was anger in Rogue's expression- it was the first truly passionate response Lance had seen from her since he'd arrived, and it was a quiet relief. So she was still present and alive enough to feel. 

"I told you it ain't yer fault, kid, so quit lookin' at me like that." 

Rogue simmered at this, grumbling as she forced down another bite of her meal. 

"So," Lance said, fidgeting. "What, uh. Why are we here? Like. What do they _do_ with us? What's it all for?" 

He gestured to Logan's leg, but meant the entirety of it. Rogue's blood, Logan's limbs. He had some of the pieces now, but was unable to see the whole picture. 

"They're makin' weapons," Logan snapped, as though that, too, should be 'obvious'. 

"We're biological and neurological marvels," Caliban furthered. "The only problem, really, is that all our gifts are attached to _people_ with our own agendas that don't necessarily coincide with their own. They're trying to figure out how to separate what we do from, well, us." 

Lance blinked as he processed this. It sounded absurd. "How's that working out for them?" He asked, his mouth hitched wryly in some dark humor. 

"Better than you'd think." 

When he waited for further explanation, looking from face to face, he only got uncomfortable, avoidant glances. "Hello?" he tried. "Anyone home?" 

"It's working," Rogue sighed. "And it's my fault. They've found out how to temporarily bind my abilities to humans. Through blood consumption, some powers can be transferred so long as they've had a shot of 'me' first." 

"God." That was hard to wrap his mind around. Pietro was very adamant when he insisted that they, mutantkind, were not human. Lance always thought the lines were much more blurred than the Maximoff twins and their fascist of a father were lead to believe, but this was difficult for even him to accept.

"You've met one of their supercharged humans," Caliban informed him. "Mr. Wolfgang Ramón. He has... certainly gone from mildly unstable to absolutely volatile in the manner of weeks the three of us have been here to watch. He's their number one guinea pig and I'm afraid they've created quite a monster." 

Lance thought of the man called Wolf- out of place amongst everyone working here for his size, his American accent, and the madness in his eyes, and felt a cold chill at the thought of his abilities being more than that of a human's. 

"If they're tryin' to make a soldier or a weapon out of him," Rogue bitterly supplied. "Then they're diggin' their own graves. One'a these days he's gonna snap an' start killin' them all, just you wait." 

"I don't think so," Caliban replied thoughtfully. "He responds rather well to orders from-" 

But he was interrupted when the set of doors closest to their cells parted, sending in a flood of late-afternoon sunlight, before closing again. Several sets of footsteps approached. 

"Oh hell," Logan muttered under his breath, bracing himself. "Here we go. Kid-" 

"Just run," Rogue told him, eyes wide, leaning forward and gripping the bars of their cell so tightly that her knuckles whitened. "I mean it Logan, _please-"_

"It. Ain't. Happening." He hissed back, just as adamantly, jaw clenched in something like rage. This was clearly well-trod ground they'd danced before. 

Before Lance could ask what they were talking about, four armed guards came into their line of sight. The two in front were basic-looking muscled toughs he vaguely recognized from his capture. Bringing up the rear was Wolf, hands tucked in the back pocket of his too-tight jeans. No- not his. _Lance's_ jeans. He recognized the old grass stain on the left knee. 

"On the ground," a guard ordered crisply as he stopped outside their cell, already typing in the key sequence. When Lance remained stonily in place, Rogue snatched his wrist and yanked him down to kneel beside her. She released him immediately and he wondered if she still found it strange, being able to touch people. 

The guard stole inside, then pounced upon Rogue with such speed Lance didn't have time to react, planting a knee into her back to bend her forward and bringing, of all things, a large and empty syringe to the nape of her neck. Lance began to bark out a protest, but Wolf lazily aimed a pistol in his direction from the doorway of the still-open cell, halting his movements. 

Before them, Logan was being hauled forcefully from his cell with a loop of metal at the end of a pole fastened around his neck abrading a raw-looking divot just under his jaw. Lance was reminded of the tools old-fashioned dogcatchers used to keep feral canines from snapping distance. 

Logan's hands were efficiently fastened behind his back with strong cables, and then he was prodded in the spine with a baton. He hopped inelegantly on his one leg, expression stormy, making eye-contact with none. Lance got the strong impression he found this entire scenario humiliating. 

Glancing at her, he saw how Rogue, nose almost brushing the ground, and attempting to maintain her chilly neutrality, was beginning to fail. Her chin dimpled in a way that suggested she was fighting back tears. 

"What's this?" the fourth attendee, a small blond man in his early fifties with a softness to his features and belly the other guards did not have, peered at Lance curiously. "A newcomer?" He had a slight accent Lance couldn't place and set his words down very precisely. 

"He is bait, sir," explained the guard holding Rogue. "A worthless drunk of an Earthshaker. We are using him to lure in the real prize." 

"I will decide if he is worthless," said the man, and though he was smaller than everyone there, looking more used to a life of desk work than one of combat, the cool authority of his tone subdued all who listened. "Bring him too, Wolf." 

"No," Rogue said softly, at the same time that Logan growled, "Leave the kid alone." Both were ignored, and Wolf eagerly sheathed his pistol in the holster at his belt before leaning past Rogue's guard- she shuddered as his arm brushed her- and grasping at Lance's resisting arms like a parent plucking a child from a play-pen. 

"No funny business," the guard called Markl hissed hotly as Lance and Logan were lead back to the doors the foursome had entered. When Lance glanced over his shoulder at him, he saw him gesture with the syringe still held to Rogue. Whatever he meant by that, it wasn't good. 

Logan stumbled into Lance's side and the younger man tried to remain a steady counterbalance; near-strangers forced into camaraderie by virtue of being the _other._

He took what little comfort from the professor's contact as he could while they were ushered to a weedy and grass-strewn lot outside, where the lowering sun was quickly burning a dull-red stripe into the horizon line. A few paces from the building, they stopped in their tracks. He could hear distant cicadas shrilling their song, and the stink of brine in the air was near-tangible. 

Lance glanced around, waiting for something to happen, but the others seemed perfectly content to remain silently in place. It was only Logan's heavy breathing that hinted something was up. 

Looking at the professor, who was now crushed into him, Lance saw that his eyes were screwed shut, his shoulders shaking, and sweat beaded his forehead like glass marbles. 

"What's happening to him?" Lance asked. His arms hadn't been tied, so he ignored Wolf's warning growl and put a steadying hand on Logan's shoulder. But then he understood without needing to be told. Outside of the influence of whatever was blocking their abilities, Logan was growing back his severed leg- and it was not a painless process, the rapid creation of bone, fat, muscle, and blood cells doing the impossible. 

After that realization, it felt wrong to speak. He simply closed his eyes and pressed back into Logan's side, waiting the process out with him and trying not to hear the wet popping sounds of new flesh crawling into being. God, but he wanted a drink. 

At last the tiny crunches and snaps dwindled and died and Logan let out a breath of relief, moving his bulk off of Lance and gingerly testing the limb. His new foot looked pink and soft on the scraggly grass without any callouses to protect it. 

"Splendid!" beamed the blond man, clapping his hands cheerily; the resemblance to Winnie the Pooh was striking. "You really are remarkable, Wolverine. We were able to learn so much about your genetic makeup from the tissue and bone samples you so generously donated." 

Wolverine's expression darkened, if possible, even further. 

"Well, come on," he bid, not deterred in the slightest by the charged silence. "There's work to be done!" 

Logan and Lance were lead to a large tented area; inside was revealed a number of neatly-lined recliner chairs, each covered by a clear plastic tarp for easy cleanup. A handful of men and women in guards uniforms milled here and there, cleaning medical equipment or sitting at desks with computers and stacks of paperwork. 

Lance's impression of a battlefield's makeshift dental office was only increased by the presence of IV poles holding empty bags beside the chair he was pushed into, although he'd never once been in such a chair with an iron bar secured over his ankles, nor had his wrists been strapped to the armrests before. 

He leveled a scowl as Wolf gleefully secured him immobile, trying to emulate Logan's stony, untouchable silence to hide the growing nervousness. When an invisible force gently rocked a tray of medical instruments beside them, Wolf thrust an accusing finger in his face. 

"I saw that," he grinned toothily. "Keep it under wraps, Alvers. You wouldn't want a little accident making a vegetable of poor Anna Marie." Lance got his meaning immediately, and understood Rogue and Logan's previous argument in an instant. If Logan ran, if he used his claws, that empty needle would be jammed into her spinal cord, severing it and paralyzing her. The same threat, evidentially, held true for Lance. 

"Got it, got it," he quickly conceded. He would have held his palms up, had his hands not been immobilized. "Um, Он, она просит прощения. Or whatever." His pronunciation was terrible; Fury had pushed him to learn languages for the job but he'd never been as adept as Pietro. 

"What are you doing to the Avalanche, Wolf," admonished the small blond man, returning from where he'd been assisting the other guard in strapping Logan down, too far out of Lance's sight to watch. "Go intimidate someone else." He made shooing motions with his delicate, near colorless hands. 

Wolf's grin softened to something warmly, almost intimately, fond. It was such an unexpected transition that Lance could only stare when the big man loped to the other's side, playfully brushing against him with enough force to make him stumble. 

"I was just playing with him, Doc." He headbutted the man's shoulder- not gently, but not as forcefully as he could have, either. 

"Be that as it may, every time you 'play' with my patients, I seem to be the one who has to clean up the bloody chunks you contaminate with your saliva." Doc put a palm to Wolf's head, shoving him back. Wolf, undeterred, nuzzled unabashed into the palm on his face, tactile and boisterous and very, very affectionate. "Go help Dominic prep the Wolverine for surgery. And then come right back!" 

Wolf gave Doc's fingers a cheeky nip before strolling off, hands once more in Lance's back pockets as he went. 

Finally Doc approached Lance, bending with hands on knees in an exaggerated motion and smiling genteelly at him as though they were co-conspirators. "He's all bark and no bite, like all the rest of my hounds. Don't you worry." 

Sitting himself on a nearby stool, he continued to gaze studiously at Lance's face. "Well," he said softly, as though surveying a canvas he would begin painting on, once he'd decided on the correct picture. "Well, well, well, well." 

Lance raised an eyebrow, still trying to shake off the mental image of tall, young, domineering Wolf practically rolling over for this small, older man. Making an effort to look him straight in his small, watery-blue eyes he said, "Can I help you, 'Doc?' My legs don't grow back as well as Logan's do, m'afraid" 

He regretted his flippancy the moment the words left his mouth. Though not as hotheaded as he'd been in his youth, he still had a temper and a tendency to shoot his mouth off at inappropriate times. He reminded himself of Rogue's vulnerable position and made a mental note to keep it civil, though, harsh as it was, he didn't know if he was willing to be tortured for her. 

Thankfully, the doctor didn't seem to mind his bad attitude. "Of course." Scooting forward on his stool, he pressed his thumb to the inside of Lance's arm, then tutted when, upon removal, Lance's tight skin took too long to darken back to its natural olive tone. "You're dehydrated." He called, in carefully accented Russian, for a saline drip. Lance closed his eyes as his forearm was pierced. 

He continued to stare at the back of his eyelids while his lymph nodes were massaged, and when chilly hands reached under his robe and around his waist, prodding at his kidneys and liver. He had to give in when one lower eyelid was pulled down and the color of his inner lid was noted. As long as he stayed quiet and still, he could pretend this was a routine examination for SHIELD, and nothing sinister. 

"I think we could take a large sample of blood," the doctor declared finally. "You're a healthy young specimen. And I'll want a cheek swab to study, as well. But," he dropped his voice to a whisper when Lance finally opened his eyes. "Markl was right when he said you are not beneficial to much of our experimentation. Not entirely! I would still very much like slides of your gray matter on my projector screen, in good time. You mutants. Such fascinating creatures. Such pretty monsters." 

He said this with a twinkly smile, like Lance should be delighted at the prospect of being used in such a fatal way. Lance worked to school his expression, to remain neutral, but it was difficult when his stomach rioted, a mix of dread and borderline-hysterical hopelessness and the onset tremors that always began when it'd been too long since he had a drink. The doctor continued. 

"We could, of course, postpone this step in our research, should you be cooperative in another matter." 

The tent flap parted; Lance couldn't see it, but he could hear the rustle of the thick canvas and feel the brush of balmy, salty air on his face. 

"Oh, Wolf," greeted the doctor, glancing over Lance's shoulder. "That was good timing. You're so much better at making final agreements than I am. Would you just- there's a boy." 

Wolf approached and the doctor made to stand. "Dominic and I have a bet," the former leered. "He thinks Wolvie's gonna stay quiet this time. But there's no way. His _eyes?!_ He'll be screaming loud enough to hear him from the main island!" 

The doctor ignored this. "It was lovely meeting with you, Avalanche," he excused himself. "I believe I'll be working with you again soon." He scurried off, no doubt eager to resume tormenting Logan. 

Wolf remained standing still for long enough that Lance risked another glance at him, only to see those dark eyes staring intently at him. Upon contact, Wolf grinned. His teeth were very large and very white. 

"So," he said. "Scoot over, Baldy." 

Lance, restrained as he was, was unable to move, but Wolf leaned over the top of him anyway, propping his elbows on the chair like Lance was some sort of table. "I have a few questions for you." 

Lance said nothing, and did not lower his gaze. This did not seem to put Wolf off in the slightest. He drew one long finger up from Lance's wrist to his forearm, stopping perilously close to where the needle supplying saline to his veins made his skin pucker. "What do you know about the Maximoffs?" 

Lance again fought to keep his expression blank. When it was clear an answer was expected, he said vaguely, "The twins? We work together. I don't see them much." 

"Huh." That white, wide smile grew devilishly. "That all? You sure?" 

From his back pocket he withdrew a wallet- cracked and flaking faux-leather. It was Lance's wallet. 

Wolf flipped through the old thing, tossing cash aside like it was worthless and focusing instead on the cards- driver's license, liquor license, a punch card from the café Kitty's mom ran, his gym membership- before reaching the photos. 

"Aww," he smiled mockingly, pulling first a string of tiny photobooth images- he and Kitty at a friend's New Years party, wearing novelty sunglasses and holding colorful noisemakers. They'd been tipsy and silly that day, making one goofy face after another save for the final picture in the series, where she'd grabbed him and kissed him full on the mouth just as the camera flashed. She'd looked adorable that day, all bundled up in her fuzzy sky-blue parka and her hat with the ear-flaps, her cheeks and nose pink from the bitter cold. Remembering it now made his heart hurt. 

Lance kept his gaze straight ahead, not acknowledging Wolf's perusal of his personal belongings, until the other man said, "Shadowcat sure is a good-lookin' mouthful. How'd you swing her?" 

He laughed at Lance's stricken expression. "What, you think I don't know your little girlfriend? Katherine Pryde's been on our radar long before you ever were. And so has he." 

From the wallet he drew a battered and torn piece of newspaper, near-transparent from age, that Lance had been keeping since high school. His stomach lurched. He didn't have to look to know what the grainy image on that paper showed: two teenagers caught red-handed. The title of the article had read _Mutant Teens Vandalize Bayville Park._ He'd kept it because of Pietro's face, clear while the rest of his body was a blur. He'd been smiling. Not a grin or a smirk, but a genuine beam. In the background, teenage Lance struggled to keep up, laughing because he already knew it was futile. 

"Pretty-Boy was a cute kid," Wolf remarked, eyebrow cocked. "Wish I'd got to meet him then. He's so much more guarded now- nearly ripped my head off when I grabbed his ass at the club. He caved in soon enough, but man, he's a nasty fighter. If I weren't living on a steady diet of wolverine steaks, I'd _still_ be bruised up!" 

Lance stiffened, jaw automatically clenching, and worked to say nothing. Pietro was fine. Kitty was fine. Wolf was just trying to mess with his head. 

"They're coming for you, you know," Wolf said conversationally, and began bouncing his finger off the top of the needle, tapping gently until Lance felt the reverberations deep in his veins. Lance's chair creaked when the bigger man shifted his weight, propped an arm on his knee. He was practically on top of Lance now. There was something wrong with his body temperature; he burned hot as a fever. "Our source says they stole a jet- looks like somebody loves you, Alvers." 

Lance blinked in alarm. There was no way what Wolf was saying was true. "You're lying. They hate each other," he protested, wanting to laugh but the tiniest seed of doubt preventing it. "They wouldn't work together for anything." 

"Huh," Wolf shrugged. Lance hated his cocky, self-assured smile just then, like he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was right, that Lance was being foolishly obstinate. "Well, _believe it or not,_ they're still coming. And we'll welcome them into our little family with open arms." 

From several chairs back, the beginnings of a mechanical whirring began to sound, high and ear-piercing like a miniscule buzzsaw. There were several repressed grunts and a pained gasp that sounded horrifyingly like Logan's voice. 

It _was_ Logan's voice. 

Wolf smiled, leaned in close, and said quietly and very precisely in a voice of darkest satin, "The question, Lance Alvers, is this: What would you do for us to keep Maximoff and Pryde safe from me?" 

Lance swallowed, his heart beating so hard he thought surely the tic of his pulse must be visible in his throat. There was no lie in those mad eyes. He was as certain of this as an owl circling a rabbit knew his meal was imminent. How ever impossible it was, Wolf was telling the truth. 

He wet his lower lip and closed his eyes, the rabbit accepting his fate with all the fight stolen prematurely from his bones. "Anything."

Giving in at last to whatever they were conducting, Logan finally began to scream.


	9. Off Kilter

Kitty was roused by an incessant, familiar tinkling sound. The chime of bells would intermittently pause for several minutes, then start up again, working their way into her muggy dreams until at last she was forced to give up the pretense of sleep.

She groaned as she reached a hand from the warm cocoon to pat around for her phone, bringing it back into the folds of Scott's warm hoodie to press to her ear. 

"He _llo?"_

"Finally! What's been keeping you? I only had to call like a billion times." 

To her sleep-fogged brain, the scent of Scott on the fabric around her, coupled by his sudden voice in her ear, was very disorienting. She half-expected to open her eyes and see him on the jet. "Where are you?" she croaked. 

"About a click behind _you."_

Gradually, she was coming to herself, eyes sliding grittily open as she sat up in her reclined passenger chair. She looked into the pilot's seat for Pietro and felt a pang of momentary panic in her chest when he was nowhere to be seen. The jet sailed on autopilot through the starry lavender sky without him. 

"You said you're here?" she clarified, unbuckling herself and standing. Poking at the rearview cameras showed that there was indeed a helicopter tailing them. Below them stretched Alaska as they rapidly approached the coast. Soon they would be over the open ocean. "Why? If you're trying to stop us again-" 

It was with more relief than she cared to admit that, on another of the mounted cameras, she saw Pietro's silhouette back in Ororo's perch. He was crouched with what looked like a _missal_ launcher on his shoulder, staring dead ahead at the helicopter with cold determination on his fine features. _I take_ one _nap and this is what I wake up to?!_ she despaired. 

"Yeah, so like. Can you call off your dog, please?" Scott was saying. "Logan could probably survive a crash landing, but you know I wouldn't." 

"Logan's with you?!" 

"Just call him off." 

Grousing loudly to herself, Kitty stood and phased through the cockpit door, approaching the rear where the pressurized tube kept the rest of the cabin safe. She knocked sharply on it with her knuckles. "Pietro!" 

He glanced down. She doubted he could hear, so she just pointed firmly at the floor in front of her. Her meaning was clear in her stern face: _Come here._

He scowled stubbornly. He certainly wasn't going to do what she asked just because she wanted him to. 

"You're mistaken if you think he's my dog," she told Scott tiredly. "He's more like a cat." A half-feral cat ten times more likely to bite you than let you scratch behind his ears. 

"At least he put the launcher down. Where did you even _get_ that?!" 

Kitty thought it prudent not to mention Magneto's semi involvement in their present armed state. "Look, are you gonna tell me why you're here or not?" 

There was a brief scuffle, and then Logan's gruff voice met her ear. "They've got Rogue." 

"What?" 

It felt like the bottom had dropped from her stomach. Rogue was her _friend._ Sure, they'd lost touch, but hearing that something bad had happened to her was devastating. 

"Yeah, and a bunch of others, too. It's not just your boyfriend being holed up on hell-island. We're here to help bring them back. But to do that, I'm gonna need you to land before you hit the ocean. You _cannot fly_ over that island in a huge jet like that. We'll take you with us." 

Kitty bit her lip. If it was anyone else asking, she would have assumed it was a trick to drag her and Pietro back home for Charles. But this was _Logan._ She trusted him as much as she would her own father. 

"You promise you're not gonna take us back?" 

"I promise, Half-Pint." 

It was the childhood nickname that did it. She nodded, though he couldn't see her. "Alright, Logan. I'm gonna find someplace I can land, okay? Stay close." 

Pietro was by her side the moment he felt the change in altitude. "What do you think you're doing?" he snapped. One second absent, the next his hand was covering hers on the controllers. She'd never get used to how fast Quicksilver could be. 

"Logan and Scott are here to help us." 

"That's fantastic. Doesn't answer my question, though." 

He sounded perturbed, but not angry. And he didn't try to change their course, so Kitty answered, "I'm landing so that we can go to the island with Logan and Scott." 

He looked at her, quietly and steadily, and she answered his unspoken question. "If I thought for a second they'd keep us from Lance, I'd be up there next to you with the other missile launcher." 

His shoulders relaxed slightly. He didn't look happy about it, but he sat and buckled himself in, trusting her word. It was at once flattering and unnerving; she prayed she wasn't letting him and Lance down. 

Logan and Scott landed not far from them. "Stay back," she told Pietro quietly as they secured the jet. "They try anything and I'll go incorporeal until you come get me." 

He nodded, and she cautiously approached the four-seater Robinson. When the side-door raised, Scott smiled awkwardly. "Hey, Kitty." 

At the controls, Logan lifted a hand in a lazy half-wave. 

"Hi, guys." She kept her tone cordial, yet authoritative. "Look, we're on a strict time budget here, so I'll make this quick. You want to come with us and help, that's great. And I understand that the jet is too big and conspicuous to fly over such a small island. But _I_ fly the helicopter, understand? And Pietro sits next to me. I'm not letting you take me home. I'm not letting you jeopardize my mission. Lance is the priority here." 

When they both nodded their unhappy agreement, she waited for them to both climb to the back seats before beckoning to Pietro. He was at her side in an instant, weapons bag in hand, shoulder pressed to hers and fixing both men with a suspicious glower. 

He braced an arm on either side of the entryway when she sat and belted herself in, ever vigilantly waiting for anyone to make a false move, then reluctantly took the seat next to her. He swiveled so that his knee was pressed to the outside of her leg, a hand on the back of her chair, to continue assessing Logan and Scott. The former seemed unimpressed; the latter looked uncomfortable with such scrutiny. 

"Not a dog, huh?" Scott asked quietly from where he sat behind Kitty. She shrugged, genuinely appreciating Pietro's caution. She knew that if push came to shove, he would ensure they still got the job done. 

As they lifted off, Kitty said into her headset, "I assume you two have some sort of plan, how you intend to rescue... how many people did you say there were?" 

"We don't know," Scott replied honestly. "Jean and I have been tracking this for a while. They mostly go for mutants unaffiliated with any organization. That they've now taken both an X-Man and a SHIELD agent means they're confident enough to make both groups angry." 

"I can't believe you let it get this bad," Kitty snapped. "I saw the flight logs. You and Jean _knew_ mutants were being taken, and you didn't do anything." 

"We gathered information!" he protested. "Charles said we weren't ready to act yet, but then-" 

"Then someone who 'belongs' to him got taken," Pietro supplied bitterly. "That's it, isn't it? He could care less until it got personal. Until someone spat in _his_ coffee." 

"You're not too far off the mark there, kid," said Logan, and Kitty was surprised to hear unmistakable anger in his own voice. She couldn't remember a time Logan hadn't stood with the professor's decisions. 

"You should have helped us sooner," Kitty insisted. "Back at the mansion. Instead of trying to stop us." 

"Maybe we should have," Logan said, at the same time Scott piped, "Not against the professor's orders!" 

A charged hush fell in the cabin as they at last left Alaska behind. The sea was a black void below, and ahead, their lights barely pierced the thickening fog. It was an isolated, lonely sort of place. 

"I'm actually kind of relieved you're here," Kitty admitted finally, when it was clear nobody else was going to say anything. "I was scared. Storming the place, just the two of us, you know. I feel better that Scott knows where we're going and Logan is... Logan. I feel like we have a better idea of what we're in for now." 

Scott's hand squeezed her shoulder. A muscle in Pietro's face twitched, and he scooted closer, his bony knee now actually kind of painful in her leg. She shot him an annoyed glance that he pretended not to notice. Despite her nap, fatigue was wearing in fast; she could only imagine how tired he must be. Without taking her eyes from the skies, she tilted her head to brush his wrist with her cheek and felt, rather than saw, his shoulders relax minutely. 

"How long have they had Rogue?" she asked. 

Logan shifted in his seat. "Three weeks," he said, clearly and distinctly. Kitty frowned. That couldn't be right- 

"No," Scott argued. "You said Charles only just got wind of her disappearance." 

"I lied." 

There was such an odd tone to those two words that Kitty had half-turned to look at him before he pounced, violently seizing Pietro's wrist from Kitty's headrest and dragging it across his chest in a cross-body hold. Pietro cried out- a harsh bark of fright? _Pain?_

Shocked and disoriented, the helicopter controls slipped from her grasp and they dipped alarmingly. It was Scott's raw shout that gave her the sense of mind to grab them again and right the aircraft. 

Reality swayed. The world had gone mad; nothing made sense anymore when trusted professors became long-dead women. 

Unable to fully look away from their flight path and avoid crashing, Kitty could catch only dreadful glimpses. A blue hand on a pale throat. A stiletto knife pressing an indent into the soft skin just under Pietro's eye. Pietro's lips pressed chalk-white in silent, rapid-breathed panic. A pistol's barrel crammed somewhere between Scott's ribs. 

If she could just grab ahold of Scott and Pietro she could phase them safely through the helicopter and- 

And what? Take their chances with the sea? Even in summer, they'd freeze to death before Scott's lasers attracted any emergency services. 

Overwhelmed, with anxiety pounding her heart like a Taiko drum, tears filled her eyes. She bit her lip and focused her gaze to keep them from falling. 

"What do you want from us, Raven?" She asked, and was pleased when her voice somehow emitted steadily. 

"I want my daughter back," said Mystique. "And I told them I would bring you for trade." 

* * *

Wolf, Lance was quick to learn, could go from affably smiling to murderously snarling in a heartbeat. It was difficult to know what would garner an attack and what would warrant only a laugh, a shrug, or even a self-depreciating joke. If he'd had a year to study the enhanced man, he doubted he'd fully know what made him tick and how to avoid pushing his buttons. 

The only one who seemed to understand him at all was Doc, and that was confusing enough on its own. Was their relationship paternal? Servial? Sexual? Some disturbing combination of the three? 

That last one seemed most likely, with the way Wolf happily lounged at the Doc's feet or gamboled around his side, nuzzling and nipping him in equal measure. Lance tried not to think about it. 

He tried to avoid thinking about a lot of things, retreating to some deep mental state where he could emotionlessly mop blood and viscera from cement floors and dump the pink water out on the dirt outside; could catch confusing glimpses of strange experimentation from the corners of his eyes and then turn the other way. Most of the Doc's hounds- many recruited from nearby Russia knowing little more than they'd be offered a well-paid job if they knew how to keep their mouths shut- did the same. 

If it was for Kitty and Pietro, he could turn a deaf ear to any number of screams for help. 

It was only when he was returned to his cell for a spaghetti dinner after all the grunt work was done that he felt his cool façade start to fracture at the seams. He didn't realize that he was digging his fingernails into the sides of his face until Rogue firmly pried his hands away. He stared at her, eyes wide. 

"You've been gone for hours," she said accusingly. "I thought they'd killed you." 

"I'm sorry," he answered, voice hoarse. There was something about her frank, brusque manner that reminded him of Pietro, and it brought him closer to earth. "It, uh," he wet his dry lower lip. "Would it be alright if I held you?" 

She wrinkled her nose at the strange request, and he thought she'd say no, but then she gave an jerky nod. "Don't get any weird ideas, though," She warned half-jokingly when he enveloped her in his arms and rested his chin on her shoulder, rocking her. She was warm, and he could feel her pulse against his cheek. That there was still life in this gray world grounded him. 

When he closed his eyes, the faces of the strangers' corpses swam in his vision, morphing until it was the bodies of everyone he'd ever loved he was forced to carry one-by-one to the disposal cart. The worst part was the weight. Had he thought about it before this day, he would have assumed carrying a dead person would be similar to carrying someone sleeping. They couldn't have been more different. He now knew that without a soul, a corpse was no more than an object, and the finality of so many senseless tragedies chilled him to the bone. 

Lance was a tactile person, and he'd been lucky to find love in Kitty, someone who needed physical contact as much as he did. Rogue was not such a person, but she was trying. Her arms tightened around his waist. 

"Good Lord in heaven," She exclaimed, tugging him towards the bunks. "You're shaking like Jell-O in a hurricane. Sit down before you fall down." 

He tried to smile, tried not to fall apart completely as he hauled her tightly to his chest with clinging desperation the moment he'd sat and buried his face in her shoulder, but his mind was a disaster zone just then. Had he been anywhere else, the seismic waves would have cracked the plaster off the walls by now. 

"Hey," she said. "Hey! Don't freak out on me! Think about something else. Um..." She wracked her brain for some tidbit of Lance-information she'd collected in their brief time living together. "Uh, what about that guitar of yours? You still play it?" 

He tried to sharpen his focus, but it was a moment before he could answer. "Yeah, sometimes." His shaking lessened. "You still sing?" 

"What?" 

"You used to sing sometimes," he said, and just remembering her soft voice as she washed dishes or showered calmed him. "It was good, too." 

Her face pinked. "I didn't know anyone was listen'. I mean, yeah, who doesn't sing to the radio while drivin'?" She let out a little laugh. "When I was a kid, that was my big dream. To become some high-falutin' country star, like Dolly Parton." 

"Bet you could still do it," he said, and she let out a little snort of a laugh. 

"You big goof." But she didn't sound too annoyed, so he let out a long shuddery breath and sat up, relaxing his vicelike grip on her. His stomach still felt like it was in knots, but at least he could breathe. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. 

"Thanks, Ro." 

She looked a little relieved, and gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder before returning to her dinner. One glance at the thin noodles in runny red sauce had him turning away, memories resurfacing as he vividly tried to force them down again. 

Instead he looked at the cell across from them. Caliban had curled with his back to them, shoulders moving slowly with deep breaths. Logan lay in the bunk beneath him, eyes bandaged. He was holding very still, but Lance suspected he was awake. 

"Can't eat, huh?" Rogue asked, and Lance shook his head, pushing his plate towards her. She didn't push the matter, nor did she ask what they'd had him doing. He'd be grateful for this small mercy for the rest of his life, though he knew that was likely not very much time at all at this point. He knew why they had him doing the gruesome cleanup; it was a warning of what Pietro and Kitty were in for, should anyone misbehave. That he knew he was being manipulated did not stop it from being so effective; they could open every door right now and he'd remain where he was. He'd give them his hands, his legs, anything they asked for. There was no question to it. 

When Wolf arrived for him, he stood, already slipping back as deep into his mind as he was able, deep enough that he could watch the world through his eyes as a passenger, not as an active participant. 

"Brought your medicine," Wolf crooned, gently waving a plastic cup of amber liquid so that none sloshed over the side. Lance held out his hand, didn't fall for the playful reaches and pull-backs until, pouting boredly, Wolf just smacked the cheap whiskey into his open palm. 

Lance drank it down without pause. It was about two mouthfuls with nothing to cut the firey burn, and he felt it sink like a rock to his empty stomach, where it pooled out, slipping into his veins and bringing him to life like the sweetest and most familiar of poisons. He closed his eyes and sighed as his shaking gradually tapered out. 

"Who needs rehab, eh?" Wolf grinned at Rogue's incredulous face. They'd given him some earlier, too, when he'd shaken too hard to properly use the mop or broom. They needed him functioning for now. 

"Now," Wolf continued. "I know it's past your bedtime, yada yada, but there's something real interesting on our tarmac I think you'd like to see. A little reunion of sorts." 

Lance's eyes flew open. He bit hard on the inside of his cheek to keep silent, and did not protest when Wolf drew him out of the cell with an arm around his shoulders. This was it, the moment he'd been dreading for so long. 

Numbly he stayed in step with Wolf, willing his heart to remain calm. They'd told him their plan earlier- separate Kitty from Pietro, so that she could not protect him from bullets, and keep Lance in their sights at all times, so that Kitty would not try to fight back. Using loved ones against people seemed to be their favorite trick in the book; everyone had a price. 

He would not show fear. He would not give Kitty even further incentive to do as they said. 

He didn't look into any of the cells they passed. He didn't want to recognize anyone when he'd inevitably be forced to clean their bodies, too. 

It was dark night outside when they finally exited the building and made quick time to where a line of helicopters gleamed under the moon like so many silver dragonflies. The large blue Robinson was where so many hounds' attention were focused; they surrounded it, guns drawn. The lightest of drizzles had started; raindrops so faint they whispered on his skin, and he wondered if he were imagining them. 

He heard Kitty's voice before he saw her. "Let him _go,_ you-" 

And then they were marching around the side of the helicopter, and Lance could not stop the tiny, suspiciously sob-like sound that escaped him, nor could he prevent his knees from shaking as he at last saw his girlfriend and the boy he'd once loved dragged forcefully at gunpoint towards him. He'd been a fool to think he could remain stoic through this. 

Wolf's grin could not have grown any wider as he caught Lance and dragged him back against his chest, a crossed hand on either side of his jaw in a clear neck-breaking threat. "Bonsoir, honored guests," he greeted boisterously. "Been wondering when you'd show up." 

Kitty's stare burned into Lance. He couldn't look away; her dear face, her concerned eyes. Somehow she'd received a large cut on her upper arm and the blood, shockingly red in the helicopter's lights, trickled slowly down her elbow. 

Pietro's head was bowed as they pushed him forward; people surrounding him on all sides should he dare to run. They were ushered closer and closer, until he could have reached out and touched them. 

Slowly, Pietro looked up, and met Lance's gaze. He smiled impishly. 

That was when the first of the helicopters exploded.


	10. Empty Hearts

Just before landing, they'd gotten into position. Scott had ducked into a hollowed-out space between the two back seats, his larger shoulders barely managing to squeeze in place while Pietro crouched by the door with the bag of weapons, ready to run faster than the human eye could track.

The same dull, throbbing headache that had been plaguing him since his fathers' house had risen to new heights, and he closed his eyes, resting his forehead against the cool interior of the Robinson in the hopes of alleviating it. 

When Kitty let out a hiss of pain, he'd glanced sharply their way, voicing his protest when he saw that Mystique, having already taken on his form, had dashed an oyster knife shallowly over the skin of Kitty's arm and was licking the blade clean. 

"Quiet," she snapped at both of them, in Pietro's voice. "I have enough of my daughter's serum in my veins to take on an additional power, and I'll be no help to any of you if I get shot immediately." 

She experimentally phased her hand through her chair and back again, pleased that Kitty's powers were so easily acquired. 

"You could have asked," Kitty grouched, holding her bleeding arm. 

There wasn't time to argue. The tarmac they landed on remained empty only for the amount of time it took Mystique and Kitty to climb onto, and then they were surrounded by waiting guards who immediately took them hostage. 

Pietro was already gone, racing the length of the island. It was just shy of an acre in size, completely invisible from Alaska's coast in all the fog. It spent a good portion of every year underwater, so any structures built on it were temporary and fairly fragile. What it lost in stability it well made up for in secrecy. 

Even in the darkness, he could see individual raindrops beginning their descent; separate and distinct enough that he could have seized and pocketed them. 

From his bag he withdrew a grenade, pulling the pin with his teeth as he returned to Kitty. He tossed it inside the furthest helicopter and then took refuge atop the building Mystique said emitted a Cerebro-inspired frequency that disabled mutant powers, wishing he could enter without being rendered useless. There were three access points to the sprawling, single-story building (shoddily rendered, electrical wiring visible beneath waterproof plastic casing): a front door, a set of double-doors in the back, and cellar doors set into the ground beside the space that was, judging from the stink and flies, a medical waste dumping ground. 

There was a tented area on a slight incline; it was currently empty, but eight dentist-like chairs with restraining straps inside told a story that turned his stomach. He knew firsthand what unwilling experimentation looked like. 

The explosion that followed was his cue to come and toss another grenade- he couldn't destroy every available helicopter, as that would severely hinder their escape, but just enough to get the mayhem started and keep the enemy from running for it was fine- and highly satisfying. 

Taking note of every possible escape route (nine remaining helicopters, two ATVs, a motorcycle, and a ferry) he left a revolver Kitty had favored in her outstretched hand. Her fingers had just begun to curl around the handle when he gave a heavier firearm to Mystique, as well, feeling in that moment like a particularly deranged Easter bunny. He then looked around for Lance, following the direction Kitty faced until he saw him. 

Alvers was near unrecognizable- bald and barefoot and wearing what looked like a tatty white bathrobe, with a broken, haunted expression on his face. It wrenched something in Pietro's chest. He _did,_ however, recognize Wolf, and it was with great pleasure that he forced his hands off of Lance's face, twisting his fingers until he heard several very toothsome snaps of breaking bone. 

The guards closest to the first helicopter had collapsed, mouths contorted in silent howls as flames and shrapnel engulfed them. Those, he ignored. He instead took the knife Mystique had previously held on him and, face set in grim determination, went to find a guard roughly his size to relieve him of his uniform and access badge. 

* * *

By the second explosion, on the opposite end of the tarmac from the first, guards all around her had ducked down and covered their heads. Kitty gripped the new weight of the weapon she'd not been holding a moment before and made a beeline for Lance, who had fallen in the opposite direction of Wolf. 

Before the beastly man could launch himself at either of them, she grabbed hold of Lance's extended ankle, gripping it tightly so that Wolf's oddly bent fingers passed right through him. 

She hauled herself, hand-over-hand, up the length of her boyfriend's body until she was wrapped in his arms, squeezing him breathless. For many long seconds, she could do nothing but hold him and be held in return. 

"I love you," she wept into the side of his neck. "I love you so much." 

Wolf was grabbing at them, again and again, frustration wrenching his features into a hideous snarl when he realized he could do nothing to either of them. Whatever he was saying was drowned out by the agonized screams of the burning guards as they ran for the ocean, trying to drown the flames. 

Lance gasped suddenly and threw out a hand, and with a great rumble the earth of the island surged upward, forming a protective cocoon around Mystique, who still wore Pietro's face. The bullets that had been fired at her bounced harmlessly off the sides. 

"It's okay," Kitty shouted. "It's-" 

But there was too much to explain coherently. Instead she stood, pulling Lance up with her, and took his hand. Bullets, shrapnel, flames and hands all flew harmlessly through them as they slowly walked the island like haunting spirits, their progress unstoppable. Mystique, now in her own unmistakable blue skin, quickly joined them. If Lance was shocked to see his old mentor returned from the dead, he was too exhausted and overwhelmed to show it. 

"We have to get Summers!" Mystique, too, shouted to be heard over the roaring chaos. Lance, looking very dazed, only nodded. 

When they reached the helicopter they'd arrived in, Kitty thrust her hand into the hole between seats and, after a moment, felt his fingers grasp hers. 

"Geez!" The older X-Man hissed. "The speedy little creep wasn't supposed to start blowing up _helicopters._ What if he'd missed and hit me?!" 

Kitty rolled her eyes. "Stop whining; we need you." She tugged on his arm. He did a double-take at the sight of Lance. 

"Alvers?!" He exclaimed as they were towed towards the only true 'building' on the small island. "You look like _hell."_

He was less used to being intangible than the others- every time somebody rushed for them, he flinched in preparation for an impact. Kitty had to tighten her hold on his thick wrist more than once to keep him from inadvertently squirming away. 

"Priorities, Summers," Mystique snapped in a tone that suggested that, were she able, she'd like to smack him upside the head. Kitty noticed how Lance looked down at his feet, clearly embarrassed about his hairless and robed appearance, and she took a moment to shoot Scott a truly poisonous scowl. 

Upon reaching the large, hospital-like structure, Scott adjusted his visor, sending a controlled beam of light into the plaster as he began to carve out a person-sized entryway. 

A poison-green flare to the west of the island caught everyone's attention as it rose and burst, then faded. 

"Pietro," Kitty said. "He's found that- that mainframe thing you were talking about." 

"Right," Mystique frowned as the guards who had turned their attention from trying to grab or shoot the intangible targets to the same direction Pietro was signaling them from. "We don't have a lot of time; I'm going to need you, Alvers." 

Scott had finished making his own doorway, and he adjusted his visor again until none of the constant light emitting from his eyes remained, then accepted the gun Mystique held out to him. The stink of the melted plaster made Kitty's eyes water. "Just close up after us first." 

Lance looked from Scott to Kitty. "Wait," he said. The panic in his eyes was sharp as a bone-break. "No, you can't go in there. Not without me. You don't understand what they _do-"_

Kitty stood on tiptoe, kissed him quickly on the cheek. "I don't have a choice, Lance, _please."_

As he sputtered his protests, she fixed her gaze on Mystique's eyes. "Don't forget your promise," she said firmly. "Rogue gets out alive, and so does Lance." 

"I remember." Mystique was already shifting, her skin parting to make way for the form of a giant hawk. 

"Kitty!" The fear in Lance's voice was heartbreaking. She couldn't look at him, knowing that she'd returned to him only to abandon him immediately afterwards. 

"I'm so sorry." 

She didn't release him until Mystique's talons curved around his upper arms, wrenching him airborne. Even if he hated her for this, she wouldn't lose him again. Scott had scrambled through the hole he'd made already, and she followed after, her revolver heavy in hand. 

Stripped of any other choices, she felt the moment Lance gave in; when the island began to tremble, and a wall of earth rose to cover the hole Scott had made to keep any guards from following. 

Now trapped inside without use of their powers, she and Scott hurried on. 

* * *

Wolf was smarter than people gave him credit for. 

And he could be quieter than they knew. 

When he realized he would not be able to take the little Shadowcat or her Avalanche just yet, he slipped off into the bedlam, finding an ATV to lean his back against as he watched his fingers heal. 

_Snap, snap, snap._ Each tiny bone slid back into place, one at a time, orderly as piano keys. It hurt, but even that was more interesting than distressing. He brought his hands up to his face and sniffed, smiling when his sensitive nose picked up a whiff of Pretty-Boy's faint scent. He remembered Quicksilver, remembered what he felt like pressed against him, remembered his sweet-salty taste. He sort of wanted to kiss him again. He _really_ wanted to bury his face in his soft, fragrant insides. 

But that could wait. 

Doc taught him long ago that hurting people wasn't all there was. To really control someone, you had to grab them by the heart. 

People's hearts came in all different shapes and sizes. Parents. Siblings. Children. Friends. Lovers. Pets. People like Lance were the weakest; they had more than one. But even people like Raven, who didn't know they _had_ hearts, could be taught otherwise. 

"What does your heart look like, Wolfgang?" Doc- Allen; he was allowed to call him Allen when they were alone- had asked, and the question had made Wolf laugh and laugh and _laugh._ Doc was so funny when he asked questions he already knew the answer to. Of course his heart was Doc himself. It'd always been Doc, since Wolf was fourteen, a wild animal living off his knives and his teeth. 

Doc had taken him, made him his. Had taught him that he wasn't the only one who saw the world this way- that there were other ways to be. He'd taught him other emotions, emotions that weren't anger, had taught him when it was and wasn't okay to kill. Doc was everything. 

"Mutants aren't people, but they operate very similarly," Doc had explained. "Seize them by the heart, and they belong to you." 

He saw the Shadowcat and the Cyclops enter the newly-made hole in their research lab, the one he'd helped Allen build from the ground up. It wasn't a very sturdy structure, not meant to last the high tides. 

The island rumbled as tectonic plates shifted, called forth by the Avalanche as he, very predictably, covered the doors, in his mind keeping one of his hearts safe inside. 

The sea raged, sensing the island's new weakness, testing its boundaries. Like Wolf, it was an ever-hungry predator, always wishing to swallow the world. 

The other guards, mostly young local toughs desperate for work, weren't prepared for such a brutal attack. They ran and panicked like a colony of ants who's nest had been kicked over, never knowing how expendable they were; unaware that they'd never been meant to survive the season, to return to their families and tell risky tales. 

He eyed the front bumper of the ATV, saw the keys still dangling in the ignition, and smiled a little to himself. The mutants had their way of making doors, and he had his.


	11. Triple Fire

If Lance thought flying in a jet was bad, that was nothing compared to being held aloft in the talons of his old mentor, who was less than stable at the best of times. He felt like a rabbit being carried to the nest of a prehistoric raptor- and she _was_ enormous; had there been any sunlight, her wingspan would have eclipsed the entire island.

The sound of gunfire has his clenched eyes flying open; of _course_ they were being shot at. Awesome. This whole week had just been spectacular. 

He pounded his fist on Mystique's claw to warn her; she took about as much notice as a mountain would to a pebble being thrown at it. And then a bullet sailed inexplicably into, and then through, the skin of Lance's torso with the same tingly, ectoplasmic sensation of outside contact when Kitty was phasing. 

That was when he decided to give up trying to make sense of this bizarre day. 

Mystique dropped in altitude as they reached where Pietro had sent up his flare; a portion of the island Lance hadn't seen before that was mostly protected by a large series of boulders stacked in a way that looked deliberate instead of an act of nature. 

She released him just before his feet skimmed the rain-wet ground and he didn't have time to yelp before he was running to keep his footing. He would have fallen flat on his face had a sturdy body not slammed into his, arms coming around to keep him steady. 

He lifted his head to see Pietro- the real Pietro- looking consideringly at him. 

"Um." Lance's brain shorted out. "Hey, Tro." He'd been trying to get Pietro to look at him for so long that, now that he finally _was,_ he didn't know what to say. 

The moment passed. 

"I didn't come all this way to save your ass just for you to trip and crack your head open," Pietro lectured, sounding annoyed. He moved back and, though Lance's legs felt like jelly, they held him fine. 

Pietro turned to Mystique, who had gracefully landed and resumed her humanoid blue form. "Right this way," he gestured with a grand bow to a door set into a small, room-sized structure built into the rocks. The door was held open by a rock and Lance wondered how Pietro had managed to access the room through the censor bar on the door, until he realized what he was wearing: an ill-fitting guard's jacket and hat squashed over his telling silver hair, with a badge on a lanyard around his neck. 

Seeing Pietro in the uniforms he'd come to associate with pain and death did unpleasant things to his stomach, even if, rationally, he could understand why he'd done it. 

Mystique strode confidently into the room, and Lance, preceded by Pietro, followed. 

The first thing he noticed was a chill in the air- why would they bother air conditioning this space but not the rest of the island?- and then he saw that the 10x10 plaster structure housed two desktop computers. It was such a benign, office-like setting that Lance cocked his head. Only then did he see the dead man stripped to his underwear crumpled on the rocky floor, the dent in the wall telling a tale of just how fast and forcefully Pietro had thrown him. 

Mystique stepped over the body as though she didn't even see him, already hooking an ankle around the desk chair and dragging it underneath her as she sat and put her technological skills to good use. 

Lance soon found out where the rest of the guard's clothing had gone when Pietro tossed it to him: a plain black t-shirt, slacks, and sturdy boots. They looked like they'd fit him better than they did Pietro. Lance was a bit disturbed to note that they were still warm. 

The wall the door was attached to boasted several security vidfeeds- cheap black-and-white units a gas station might have- and when Lance looked at them, he recognized some of the places they displayed. Most showed various cells, more than Lance had even known were available, although several stood empty. 

Some displayed the hallways inside the main buildings, presumably to monitor guard activity. And it was on one of these such camera feeds that he saw- 

"Kitty," he pointed. "And Summers." They were walking purposefully towards the majority of the cells. 

"Yeah, I know." Pietro spared him barely a glance, before turning back to Mystique. "You think you can disable the frequency that screws with everyone's powers?" 

"I will if Alvers can keep the cavalry off my back," she snapped in an irritated tone that suggested that asking her questions was only delaying her further. 

"Right." Pietro dug into a bag, produced a sniper rifle, and held it out to Lance. He winced and brought a hand to his forehead, as though feeling a sharp pain, but didn't answer Lance's questioning glance. 

Lance balked. "I'm no good with guns," he protested. "Especially not in this rain." Pietro _knew_ that- they worked for the same mutant inclusion division for SHIELD, for crying out loud. 

"Well," Pietro said impatiently. _"Get_ good, if you want us to survive this. Any more little earthquakes and you risk the entire island breaking apart, so save that as a last resort til we've got Rogue, alright?" 

Rogue. Suddenly, Mystique's involvement made a fraction more sense. 

He couldn't help his vision straying back to the screen where Kitty was displayed. She and Summers were stopped at a fork in a hallway, conversing, apparently, about which direction to take. He tried to read her mouth, but the resolution was too shoddy. 

Pietro, however, was watching a different screen, and all the color abruptly drained from his face. _"Shit,"_ he swore hoarsely. 

Lance looked to the screen that had Quicksilver so troubled, and felt his own heart stop as well. With dust visibly filling the air from the crash, an ATV had clearly slammed through the wall and now lay on its side, wheels still spinning, engine smoking. Flung several feet away, atop the pile of rubble, lay the unconscious body of Wolf. 

Such a crash should have been fatal. Even as they watched, his crushed cheekbone began to fill out again, and his mangled arm slowly twitched and jerked as bones knitted back together. 

"Kitty," Lance whispered, heart in his throat. 

"I know." Pietro looked equally distressed, but Lance didn't have time to puzzle over such an unexpected reaction. Pietro was already making for the door. "I'll take care of it. Raven, work quickly." 

She didn't bother to dignify this with a response. 

"Alvers?" 

Lance looked at his ex-lover, dread making his stomach twist in knots, but all Pietro advised was, "Put some goddamn pants on." 

And then he and the nearly empty bag of weapons were gone in a billow of silver wind before Lance could so much as tell him to be safe. 

"Be careful out there," Mystique advised Lance a moment later, not looking up from the computers in which she typed frantically. "The phasing powers I borrowed from your girlfriend are wearing off quickly; I didn't have much to begin with and I've about used them up. They don't last for long, you know. If I get shot, I'll probably die." 

Lance, throat too dry to speak, only nodded. He dressed quickly behind her back, shouldered the sniper rifle, and stepped outside to climb and then crouch atop the boulders, lying flat on his belly and staring through the viewfinder. It was dark, and he had no night vision powers, but already he could see an ATV and a motorcycle- four guards total- approaching them. He'd never felt so helpless: he'd been freed from hell, only to lose both loves of his life to the same place. All he could do was this: take a deep, shuddery breath, and squeeze the trigger. 

* * *

It was so quiet in here, compared to the chaos outside. Scott stood with a soldier's posture at her side and, though he could be irritating sometimes, there were worse companions for a mission such as this. 

The shoddy pipe-lined hallways illuminated by dim fluorescent bulbs were easy enough to navigate- clever architecture had clearly not been a priority in this design plan. When they found a thick iron door with a complicated lock, she pressed a palm to it, knowing she wouldn't be able to phase through but giving it a solid attempt just the same. 

"If we can't find an access badge, we'll just blow the door up later," Scott murmured, jerking his chin towards the sensory panel to the right of the door. "We gotta keep moving." 

She kept pace at his side. The further they delved into this winding snake-spine of a hallway, the more twitchy she felt. She thought of pitcher plants, with their long narrow necks and eroding juices at the bottom, waiting to digest hapless flies who'd fallen in. 

She'd thought all of the guards must have rushed outside at the first explosion, so when she heard someone approaching them, her heart began to gallop in fear. She instinctually grabbed Scott's wrist to phase the both of them, and saw his hand rise to his visor, before both realized again their powerlessness. Maybe Fury was right, and the mutant division _did_ rely too heavily on their powers, but training without them felt like training with both arms tied behind their backs. 

Scott turned so that his larger body shielded hers, Colt diamondback revolver at the ready. "Whoever's there, we're armed," he called. "Put your weapons down and we won't hurt you." 

The boy that emerged was younger than Kitty would have anticipated- younger than her, even. Barley twenty, still acne-pocked under his guard's hat. And he was shaking. 

He'd ignored, however, Scott's demand to drop his weapon. 

Both mutants paused at the sight of him. What were they supposed to do, kill this person- barely older than a kid- in cold blood? 

"You shouldn't have come," he said, his voice thinly accented. The gun he held on them was shaking with his arm. 

"I had to," Kitty replied honestly, ducking under Scott's hold and approaching the boy. Maybe if he got a look at her face, saw that she was no different than any other person... "People I care about very much are being held here. It's not right to do that to someone. We just want to get them and leave." 

The boy shook his head, backing away from her. "No. You aren't people. Doc said that you sound like people, you wear their faces, but you're not. You're monsters, and you want to take over everything, make us into slaves." 

"This 'doc' sounds like he's got some issues," Scott muttered. 

"He's lying to you," Kitty pressed on. "We _are_ people. My name's Kitty. He's Scott. We have families- Scott has a little brother. My parents are back home waiting for me. I have a job- _two_ jobs. I-" 

What could she say to defend their personhood? That she liked bubble baths, was afraid of snakes, dreamed of one day opening her own salon and retiring to Venice? That she liked books with happy endings, but movies with sad ones? That the first time she'd felt God, she'd been thirteen and had overheard her father reading her mother a poem on Tu B'Av in its original Hebrew? 

Why should she _have_ to defend herself, her right to live? 

What could she possibly say that would convince this boy, anyway? 

The answer was that she couldn't. 

There was an earsplitting bang as something crashed into the side of the building, shaking it on its very foundation. For a moment, as she ducked and covered her head, she thought Pietro must have thrown another grenade. 

Then she saw that the boy had aimed his gun. 

She was faster. She pulled the trigger first. Hot spray coated her face. 

It wasn't until the moment that she was forced to kill someone that she finally fully understood: Mutant. Human. _Person._ It didn't matter. Everybody was a monster. 

* * *

Pietro was always fast- incredibly fast, faster, sometimes, than even his advanced body could handle. 

Today, he pushed himself harder than he ever had before. He could not hold back. If they did not find Rogue, Mystique would not let them off the island alive. if Wolf got to Kitty first, it would be too late. Lance would be destroyed. And Pietro would never get to hear her laugh again. 

Wolf hadn't so much as managed to sit up before Pietro flung himself on top of the larger man, sending them both flying violently into the far wall, which shuddered at the impact. Bits of ceiling that had been knocked loose upon the initial ATV crash rained down on them both. 

He'd been going for the element of surprise and it had worked very well; Wolf was more crumpled looking than ever before; the person-shaped equivalent of origami crushed in a fist and thrown aside. 

He grabbed him by the lapels and threw him back outside into the rain. Wolf had the unfair advantage Mystique said that came with borrowed powers, filtered through Rogue's blood: His still worked inside the building, despite the emitted frequency. 

Pietro's did not. 

His head was now a shrieking point of pain, his headache having grown to something like an ice pick being pounded directly between his eyebrows. What was _wrong_ with him?! Was something inside about to burst? 

He couldn't worry about that now. 

The sound of a nearby gunshot made him jump, jerking around to find its source. Surely Kitty was- 

A hand tangled in his hair, slammed his forehead down against the cement floor. He saw stars. Wolf was too injured to apply any real force, but the entire world swayed and bursts of scarlet fire flashed in his brain. 

He knew that fire. 

_Wanda?_

He thought disorientingly of bedtime as a child. How much he'd feared the dark. _I'm scared, Wanda,_ he'd cried in his head, so loudly that she'd heard him despite him not uttering a word. She'd woken up, tapped on the door between their minds- a polite request from an otherwise impolite source- and lit candles inside his mind to chase away the darkness. 

Now he rolled underneath Wolf's weight, brought his knees up, and bucked him hard in the chest until he could wriggle free, his hand closing around a heavy chunk of slate. 

Something was wrong in his head. Wolf had jarred it loose with that blow. He was too dizzy to stand, so he fumbled his way outside the building, hands on the wall, to where he'd seen the electrical conduit box. He barely felt the jagged slate bite into his hand as he raised it and beat at the lock, over and over, until it broke; until the box swung open and he saw the switches and wires. 

It took some effort, but he beat and punched as many as he could- sparks flew, heat flashed in his face. There went the plumbing. There went the light. One by one he smashed and destroyed the electricity holding each individual cell door closed. 

Wolf was on him in a moment, dragging him down as rain fell in sheets, grabbing his neck and forcing his face into the mud. There was no running away from this, not from two hundred pounds of dense muscle pinning his back. He was roaring, snarling foul things in his ear in every language of the world, but Pietro couldn't hear him over the racing of his heart. 

His fingers scrabbled in the grass and mud, seeking purchase, finding none. 

Charles had said Pietro's mind was a sealed place, how he'd locked every door and bolted them tight due to the trauma of his childhood. It was a struggle to open them now, to let in the memories, the pain, the void that dragged him down and down and down. 

His mouth, eyes, ears were full of the muddy water. His chest heaved, begging for breath as he drowned. His eyes stung from grit and dirt, but he knew that wasn't why he was crying. 

Three days ago, Kitty had called him self-centered, and he'd known it was true. She had called him cowardly, and he felt it now as he sank deeper and deeper into the mud. 

_Please, Wanda,_ he begged his twin, flinging open the last door, the final block between them, letting himself feel everything. It was no longer candles she was lighting. It was an inferno. _It's so dark and I'm so afraid._

Just before he lost consciousness, he thought he heard another gunshot.


	12. Lupus Deux

Lance, too pelted by rain now to see even his own hand in front of his face, eventually had to concede defeat. He couldn't pick off the approaching, now wounded guards as they stumbled closer, leaving the dead from their overturned vehicles behind, but it hardly mattered now. 

An explosive burst of red fire further up on the island left him blinded for a moment and he cried out, nearly falling from the boulders as he shielded his eyes. _Wanda?!_ he thought, disoriented beyond belief as the light faded again. 

Inside the small room, he heard a great crash, and then he did slip off the boulders and onto the wet sand with an unpleasant sucking sound. Climbing back to his feet, he limped into the space, which was being destroyed by a mammoth-sized gray wolf. 

"What the hell are you doing now, Raven?" he sighed. He sounded just as tired and confused as he felt. 

She looked at him, her great head the size of a horse's, and then resumed the process of lifting a file cabinet and hurling it into walls. This took out two of the monitoring screens, which he now noticed had all gone black. He sighed again, pinched the bridge of his nose, and waited for her to finish this... whatever this was. 

She seemed done when the back of the abused metal cabinet finally broke off, and sat back on her haunches, her pointed ears brushing the ceiling. Then she looked at him pointedly. 

"You want me to take those folders?" he asked, pointing to where they spilled out of the broken drawers. Her bushy gray tail thumped, so he did, stuffing them all under his shirt with disinterest. 

"We done now?" he asked, and made for the door, pointing to where swirling red lights were shimmering in the clouds. "Because nobody is bothering to explain anything to me, and at some point Wanda apparently showed up, so we should probably- _whoa!"_

He jolted as a long canine nose shoved between his legs, and with a flick of her head he was bouncing along her back. She didn't slow at all, pounding forwards on four legs, and he would have fallen off entirely had he not managed to grab two fistfuls of thick fur and swing a leg over her broad back, squeezing the tapered juncture between her ribs and hips as tightly as he could with his thighs. 

"You are the worst!" he shouted, barely heard over the rain as she covered great strides of land in leaps and bounds. They were bone-soaked in seconds, the distinct stench of wet dog filling in the air. He caught a glimpse of the guards he'd been shooting at hanging suspended in midair, red tendrils flaking the skin off their bodies as their mouths opened and closed in silent screams- _holy_ shit, _Wanda-_ before they too were only sparks far behind them. 

He pressed flat to Mystique's back for dear life, burying his face between her shoulder blades and feeling her muscles bunch and straighten underneath him. Her neck was too thick to completely encircle with his arms, and he expected to fall at any second. Awful as this was, it still beat any form of flying by a landslide. 

He was finally flung from her back as she skidded to a halt, paws scrabbling in the mud, at the building where this had all begun. He struggled to sit up and gawked at what he saw. 

A small SHIELD jet had landed on the tarmac, and on the steps stood Wanda in her terrible glory, hands moving fiendishly as she projected the hellfire that burned inside her in a fierce lightshow of sparks and crackles, shredding guards into barely recognizable flakes, looking like something out of a portrait of Armageddon. 

"You will never," she said, and though she spoke quietly, her voice boomed and echoed and crackled like thunder. _"Ever_ touch my brother again." 

She was like a vengeful god; awful and awesome in the oldest sense of the words. Lance's bones shivered at the sight. It was hard to look at her, but harder to look away. 

He had to cover his eyes again as her scarlet fire flared once more to white, and then hot ashes of what had once been people rained down on the island. 

But two people, he saw when he could again open his eyes, were not looking her way. The hunched silhouettes of Fred and Todd were so familiar and welcome that Lance felt tears prick hot in his eyes. His oldest friends had come for him after all. 

It was only when he moved closer that the warmth froze to a solid block of ice in his chest. The two men were crouched over a prone body. Fred, tipping its head back, exhaled shallowly at intervals into its mouth; Todd, arms braced, compressed its chest to the correct synch of a heartbeat. 

Not wanting to distract them from their work- they were all CPR certified, and Lance knew how delicate of a process it could be- he approached silently on shaking legs, already knowing it was a mud-soaked Pietro lying limp in their arms. 

He covered his mouth to hold back a noise of despair. Fred and Todd were trying their best, had clearly been doing so for some time now, and Pietro still wasn't moving. His lips were blue under Fred's. 

_Please,_ Lance thought frantically. _Please, no..._

The cause of Pietro's state was, unsurprisingly, Wolf. He'd been thrown not far from where Lance now stood, eyes blinking, head facing the wrong way. Fred had clearly made quick work of him, but Logan's blood in his system was working to heal him. 

Mystique, having evidentially noticed this as well, lunged at the man who had so abused her daughter, catching his chest with her dagger-like teeth and shaking him violently like a chew toy. She flung him on the ground, braced a paw on his torso, and began to tear at his limbs. 

Lance turned his back to her, sinking quietly onto his knees, holding his own breath as though that would magically transfer it to Pietro's lungs instead. He watched, prayed. 

When it seemed as though all hope was lost, Pietro's eyes flew wide, and he flopped onto his side, gasping. Fred and Todd helped him roll over, supporting him as he spewed out what looked like buckets of muddy water. 

He wheezed and choked, barely drawing in enough air as Todd pounded him between the shoulders, coughing up lungfuls of water, coming to life more with every moment. His gaze fell on Lance, who could resist no longer and scooted between his friends to pull his love into his arms, bury his face in Pietro's white hair. He never had been able to let this man go, and for once, Pietro didn't seem to want him to. He caught at Lance's sleeve, holding him close. 

Todd pressed to Lance's side a moment later and Lance gave a teary laugh, moving his arm to include the toad in the embrace. Then Fred was enveloping the three of them in his massive arms, cradling them like they were precious, fragile things. 

Something heavy dropped to the ground beside them; the haggard remains of Wolf. He rolled his remaining eye in their direction and his gash of a mouth parted, letting out a stream of gravelly, breathless, crazed laughter. 

Coldly, Fred reached for Wolf, held his face in one giant hand, and squeezed until the skull shattered into fine dust in his grip. 

"Freddie," Pietro gasped, and the large mutant turned back to his friends. 

"He hit you," Fred shrugged. "So I killed him. Told you I would." 

* * *

Kitty had only moments to gape in horror at what had once been a boy's face before Scott- sturdy, reliable Scott- had her by the shoulders and was wiping something from her face with his sleeve. 

_Blood,_ she realized dully. _He's wiping blood. Off of my face. Because I just killed someone._

"Come on," he was saying, and she heard the tremor in his voice despite his best efforts to conceal it. He took the gun from her hand- she offered no resistance- and put the safety back on before tucking it into place in her waistband. Then he had her hands, tugging her past the body and deeper into the hallways. "We need to find Rogue, remember?" 

The lights went off, so suddenly they both jumped. They were plunged in bewildering blackness for a moment, before the emergency generator kicked on and they were illuminated by a faint, sickly green glow. 

"That's not creepy at all," Scott muttered sarcastically. "Come on. Lets go before things get any weirder." 

Right. Of course. She licked her lips, winced at the salty taste there, and nodded, then pushed through the fog her mind had gone into. She had a job to do. 

Shaking out of his hold, she instead walked determinedly at his side, through the hallway's curves as Mystique had described. In this claustrophobic near-darkness, she couldn't help but feel that she was being watched. 

They halted when they rounded a corner and were very abruptly met by a group of hairless, robed people in all races and ages and sizes. There had to be at least thirty freed prisoners total, and they all looked frightened, clustered together like ducks before a storm. Evidentially, either Mystique or Pietro had freed them from their cells and now they congregated, wondering where to go. 

"It's alright," Scott, ever the leader, was saying. "We are mutants like you. We've come to help you." 

"Goggles?" a familiar voice asked incredulously, and Kitty's knees felt weak when she saw Logan in the crowd, much of his face covered in bandaging, clutching the arm of another, vaguely familiar, mutant. Then she was pushing through the crowd and flinging herself into his arms. 

He stiffened at the hold, then relaxed when he recognized her scent. "Half-Pint?" he gave a little laugh. "I thought I'd never see you again." 

"What happened, Logan?" she asked, touching a finger to the edge of a bandage hanging just below his ear. He moved away from the touch. 

"You don't wanna see that, kid. It ain't pretty." 

She gulped. Anyone who was capable of harming Logan was serious bad news. 

He wasn't the only one looking to be in bad shape. Most people in the cluster were bandaged; pale; clutching to each others' arms just to remain standing. And the collective fear of the crowd was palpable. 

"Logan, have you seen Rogue?" Kitty asked anxiously. "We- we promised Raven we'd find her." 

"He took her, kid. Just after they took Alvers." 

That fell like a hot stone into her gut. Anything could have happened to her in the fifteen minutes or so since the initial helicopter landing. 

"Who took her? Any idea where they went?" 

A frail old man near the front of the crowd could stand no longer; with a great wobble, he swooned, and Scott dove to catch him. He looked anxiously at Kitty over the top of the man's head. She swallowed her fear and made a decision. 

"Scott, start taking people to the helicopters," she ordered calmly. "We need to get these folks out of here." 

"But Rogue-" 

"Leave Rogue to me." 

Scott looked at her, but his gaze was soon dragged back to the dozens of frightened faces looking to him for rescue. She knew him; he would sooner forget to breathe than ignore a cry for help. 

"And me," Logan said, in a voice that nobody who'd ever been his student could disobey. "Cal, help Goggles." 

_Caliban,_ Kitty's brain helpfully supplied, at last placing the mutant against whom Logan leaned. _The tracker._ She'd never personally met him, but he was rather famous in some circles; he ran jobs for the right price. Silly as it was, she felt a little starstruck looking into his reptilian eyes. 

He seemed reluctant to release Logan, but finally gave in with a brusque nod, bending instead to scoop up a small boy with silvery scales and fins and walk to Scott's side, awaiting orders. 

They were really doing this. Kitty took a deep breath and tucked her arm through Logan's. 

"Lets go find our girl," he said, with a lot of confidence for one blinded by bandages. 

They walked deeper into the hallways just as Scott was asking, "Show of hands: who here knows how to fly a helicopter and feels well enough to do so?" 

Holding tightly to her old professor, Kitty and Logan followed the twists and turns of the labrynthian cement hallway. Was it just her imagination, or was it only growing darker the deeper they went? 

They were long out of earshot of the others when Logan suddenly bent double, clutching at his face and giving a low moan of pain. 

"Logan?!" Kitty exclaimed, whirling on her heel and taking his shoulders in her hands. "Logan what's-" 

"It's okay, it's okay," he panted, patting her arm reassuringly. "Give me a minute-" 

She fretted, alarmed and confused, as he shook slightly, biting back any further pained noises. At last he straightened and ripped the bandages from his face entirely. Underneath, even in this dim lighting, Kitty could see his face unmarked and smooth, just as it had always been. He leaned his forehead against her collarbone for a long moment, regaining his balance, before his back stiffened. 

"I smell blood." 

Kitty couldn't smell anything, but that wasn't surprising. She didn't have Logan's... _Powers._ He had his powers back. Mystique had done it at last! 

"I-" 

"It's Rogue's blood." His expression darkened to a murderous scowl, and then he changed directions, heading for a hallway she'd all but missed previously. 

Kitty broke into a run just to keep up with him, watching as six Adamantium claws burst from his knuckles, only then understanding just how little time they had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my writing, please consider supporting my original m/m erotica [here](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&text=L.+Rambit&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=L.+Rambit&sort=relevancerank)! Stories range from about $0.99-$2.99 USD and capture a lot of darker themes that you see in my stories on ao3. Reviews on my original work mean the world to me~


	13. Ocean Mother

Logan's nose lead them to the steel doors that had previously drawn Kitty's attention. She now could phase her hands through the molecules, but found with some surprise that it was completely bricked up on the other side. To phase their bodies through would just take them back outside.

"Yer lookin' in the wrong direction," Logan growled, and pointed to the cement floor beneath his bare feet. 

"Huh." She didn't think this place was sophisticated enough for false doors and underground rooms, but then she _had_ noticed a cellar door set into the ground outside. Offering Logan her hand, she tried to smile. "Here goes nothing, huh?" 

He took her fingers, but didn't return the smile. "Just stay behind me, no matter what's down there." 

Kitty gulped, nodded, and then phased both her own body and Logan's through the floor. 

The room they fell slowly down into was brightly lit compared to the sickly glow of the building above. A small space with a nevertheless high ceiling, it looked like an examining room at a doctor's office. The majority of the desk and sink space was cluttered with jars that contained- Kitty recoiled in disgust- tissue and organ samples. 

Logan made a noise in his throat. Turning to see what he saw, Kitty's eyes swept disbelievingly over the motionless gray body of an emaciated woman strapped needlessly to an exam table. Her lips and eyelids were tinged a faint blue with purple veins clearly visible under the colorless skin, and both her arms were strapped down at the wrists. Needles piercing both exposed elbows lead to clear tubing, which transferred to slowly-filling bags of blood resting atop slowly rocking machines to keep it all from coagulating. The slow, mechanical _thunk, thunk_ sound they made as they rocked ominously filled the otherwise silent, windowless room. 

She was more identifiable by the tattoo of a black cat winding around her left ankle than she was by any other bleached and hollowed feature. 

"Rogue-" Kitty had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling. This was her _friend_ being treated like some farm animal. 

There were other blood-bags, full ones, suspended from hooks nearby- more than it looked like she was capable of producing. She was being drained to the death. 

At the sound of her voice, a man's head popped up from where he'd been lying on the ground just behind the table, and now Kitty saw a third hooked needle protruding from the side of Rogue's throat. The tube lead, not to a collection bag, but into this man's freckled forearm, where he was receiving a direct transfusion. 

"Oh," he smiled pleasantly, cheeks flushed cherry-red with stolen blood. "Just who I wanted to see; Shadowcat and the Wolverine." 

Logan let out a feral growl and strode towards him, claws extended, and the older man tisked and shook his head like he was disappointed in this childish behavior. Producing a scalpel from a nearby tray, he brought it to the unpierced side of Rogue's throat. 

"I wouldn't, if I were you." He chided. "Sit down, Wolverine." 

Logan, glaring daggers at him, nevertheless slowly sank back onto his haunches. His eyes never left the scalpel. 

Smile brightening, the man then turned his gaze onto Kitty. "Shadowcat," he repeated with great warmth, like they were old friends meeting again after a long absence. "I was wondering when you would come for your Avalanche. Taking such a publically known and well-connected mutant was a gamble, but now that you're here, I will call it a successful one. He was very easy to take, you see, as he was all alone and very intoxicated." 

Kitty resisted the urge to cringe. She and Lance had argued on the night of his kidnapping. They always ended up arguing when the topic turned to Pietro- or to his excessive drinking. She'd left him in a huff and had gone to stay at her old room in her mother's house instead, spent the night tossing and turning, and then tracked Pietro down to give him a piece of her mind, figuring Lance was probably too hungover to talk. Again. 

The doctor was speaking again, and Kitty was dragged from her guilty musings in time to hear him say, "I see your little group has managed to disable my frequencies." 

"If you're talking about the system you used to steal everyone's powers," Kitty snapped hotly. "Then yes, it looks that way." 

He nodded. "Mystique, I take it? So like a mutant, turning her back on a promise. She was supposed to bring you straight to me, you understand. No honor among the lot of you." 

This deliberate twisting of the truth was completely obtuse. "You _kidnapped_ her _daughter,"_ Kitty pointed out, eyebrows raised at this man's ridiculous views. "She didn't owe you anything." 

The doctor shook his head, still smiling in a patronizing, authoritative way that reminded her bizarrely of a school principal. "From my perspective, I'm ridding vermin from the streets; protecting good, _decent_ humans from the lot of you. Should a rat care that its children are being used for experimentation to better the _human_ race?" 

There was no point in trying to convince this man of their personhood and right to existence. Every moment spent debating with him brought Rogue closer to death. Kitty was about to say just this when his next words sent a chill through her. 

"Why, just think of your _father,_ Shadowcat." 

"What are you talking about?" she snapped, hands unconsciously balling into fists at her sides. 

"Poor Carmen Pryde. A good, honest human, no? Being taken before his time by a tragic condition. With the blood of Rogue here and the Wolverine, I could save him. I could save the world." 

Kitty hadn't even considered that possibility, but she only gave a derisive snort now, utterly offended and appalled by the implications. "You're wrong about everything but that my father is a _good_ man. He would never choose to live on the unwilling suffering of others. He would never want _this."_ Here she turned and gestured to the jars behind her, the closest of which looked to hold pieces of a liver. "He would rather die! Stop playing off of my grief to force me to agree to your sick experiments." 

Again, the man sighed. He must, she realized, be that 'Doc', the one the boy she'd shot had referred to. Not that it mattered. None of this _mattered._

"You're going to give Rogue to us," Kitty ordered now. She'd lost her fear somewhere along the way, and now only anger burned inside her. "And then you can go right to hell." 

Doc seemed to consider this. "Counter-offer," he debated. "You give me a pint of your blood; the Wolverine lets me take a segment of his spinal cord- oh don't make that face, it will grow back- and the three of you leave this island in more or less one piece. I will use your unique gifts to ensure my own safe departure. If you hurry, you can even get your rat some medical attention before it's too late." He tilted his chin towards Rogue without taking his eyes off of Kitty. 

That was a blatant lie. Her life was dwindling before their very eyes; they clearly didn't have time for impromptu spinal surgery. Logan growled again; Kitty hushed him with a glare. 

She knew what she had to do then. And she knew she was the only one available who could do it. Logan's eyes were too focused on the scalpel still held at Rogue's throat. He would sooner let the world burn than risk the lives of his students. Kitty would make the unfair choice, then. Even if they got away now, this man could not live. He'd come after them again and again, and his foul work would infect every safe space for mutants they'd fought for over the decades. She refused to live a life of constantly glancing over her shoulder for his smile. 

_If this goes badly,_ she thought, her eyes pressed tightly closed, wishing she had Charles' ability to communicate to others' minds. _Then I am so, so sorry, Rogue._

"Deal," she agreed with a steady voice, and strode to the doctor, holding out an arm. He looked taken aback by this easy compliance, no doubt expecting a fight. His watery blue eyes swept greedily across the exposed veins in her fair skin, no doubt imagining what he could do once he was in possession of her power. 

"Very smart thinking, Shadowcat," he praised, and reached for a fresh needle. This was her chance. She phased her arm into his chest, searching, and then wrapped ghostly phantom fingers around his racing heart. 

"Don't call me that," she snarled into his shocked, pallid face. "I have a name, and I know you know what it is. We _all_ have names. You don't get to pretend that we're just _rats in a cage,_ not anymore." 

She used his grip on his heart to force him back away from Rogue; the scalpel in his hand clattered to the floor. In an instant, Logan had surged to his feet and hastened to Rogue's side, carefully plucking needles one-by-one from her skin. 

"K-Katherine," he stuttered fearfully. "Kitty. You wouldn't-" 

She would. 

She _did._

The shocked expression never left his face, even as the life faded from his eyes. He slid to the floor and she dropped his heart on top of him. 

"Kitty." Logan didn't waste any words commenting on what she'd just done. He just glanced coldly at the doctor's corpse, then back to her face. "Kitty, he nicked her artery." 

"What?!" Whirling from the corpse on the floor, Kitty saw that it was true. The last of Rogue's blood glugged sluggishly at intervals through a new gash on her throat, curling around her face to pool into her ear, staining her chalk-white cheek. It should have been spurting, but there simply wasn't enough left inside her for that. She would soon go into cardiac arrest. 

Tears pricked Kitty's eyes at this final gut-punch. After everything that had happened, she would now be responsible for Rogue's death, as well? Her knees shook. She'd known this was a possible outcome, and she'd done it anyway. She would have collapsed, had Logan's words, his uncharacteristically soft tone, not stilled her. 

"Come here. I'm going to need you to keep an eye on us. Pull me away if it works. If not... let her take all she can from me. Let her take everything." 

"What are you-" Kitty started to say, but then Logan, an almost tender expression on his gruff face, brought his bare palm flat to the side of Rogue's throat, letting her blood flow between his fingers. 

The response to touching her skin was instantaneous; he jerked, cried out as she drew his power and his strength from him. Kitty understood at last. Despite all that had been taken from him, Logan, without hesitation, continued to give. 

Tears fell freely down her cheeks now and she let them, a sharp knot of a repressed sob coiling in her throat. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. This was too much. Her mind begged to shut down, deep in the ground with a corpse of her own making, the broken remains of a friend, and the unresponsive form of a man whom she loved as dearly as her own father. 

A sudden clamoring from above forced her to look tearily upwards just as the double cellar doors wrenched open, letting in a spill of distant red light against the night sky. Two faces peered down at her: Fred, holding a broken chain in his huge fist, and Caliban. It was a mark of how long this night had dragged that she didn't question when the former had arrived to this hellhole. 

"They are down here," Caliban called over his shoulder, and was quickly joined by Mystique, who threw herself into the room and landed at a crouch, ignoring the corpse on the floor in favor of her daughter. 

With more gentleness than Kitty would have thought the aggressive woman to be capable of, she began assessing her daughter's vital signs, but Kitty already knew that Rogue was going to be alright. Color had flooded her features again as Logan's healing powers caused her blood to begin regenerating at a rapid pace. The rent skin of her throat had knitted back together into a thick pink scar, and her chest rose and fell with soft breaths. 

Mystique took the unconscious man who had saved her daughter's life by the shoulders and carefully pulled him back. Kitty didn't know if it were possible for Logan to die, but if so, surely prolonged exposure to Rogue could manage it. She supported his weight with some difficulty, then called to Fred, "I can't lift him. Dukes, you'll have to do it." 

Fred nodded and turned for the regular entrance doors so Kitty, wiping her streaming eyes and nose on her sleeve, began the unsteady process of climbing out of the pit they were in to meet her coworker in the hallway and take his hand. 

Between the three of them- Mystique, carrying Rogue; Fred, carrying Logan; Kitty, a hand on each of their shoulders- they once more rejoined the group on a much emptier tarmac than it had been earlier. 

Kitty looked around frantically until she saw Lance and Pietro, sitting on the ground next to Todd. Pietro looked as though he'd been dunked in mud, and he leaned limply against Lance's side. Releasing Fred and Raven, she ran for them both, nearly knocking Lance to the ground with the force of her tackle. 

"It's over," he said quietly, stroking back her hair as a fresh bout of sobs threatened to overwhelm her. "It's all over." 

Pietro picked up her hand by the wrist, expressionlessly examining the blood crusted on it in long reddish-brown streaks. Kitty nearly gagged when she remembered what she had done to earn those stains. Before she could start crying anew, Pietro lifted a bottle of water that someone had given him, uncapped it with a flick of his thumb, and began pouring it over her fingers, rinsing the blood away. 

_He could have used that on himself,_ she thought, allowing him to pry her fingers apart, to tilt her hand back and splash the red gunk out from beneath her fingernails. He rolled her sleeve up, bit by bit, rubbing at the stubborn spots with his thumb, until all was gone. 

When he finished, she slid her fingers between his and pulled his hand to her cheek, resting her face against it. Perhaps now was not the time to wonder why it felt right, the three of them pressed close like this. 

Lance watched this exchange in quiet puzzlement. "When did you two-" he started to ask, but was interrupted by Mystique, Rogue still limp in her arms, striding aggressively towards them. 

"You will take her with you," the blue-skinned woman ordered, holding her daughter out to Lance. "Tell her- tell her whatever you like when she wakes, but leave my involvement out of it." 

Pietro spoke first. "No." He glared at his old mentor. "Stop being such a coward, would you? It's not enough just to help in the bad times. If you actually care about her, then _be_ there for her." 

He glanced to the side, and Kitty saw Wanda inside a small SHIELD jet she'd apparently arrived in, now preparing for takeoff. She thought of how Magneto had set up an underground room for his children using their mothers' faith despite a lifetime of micro and macro cruelties, as though providing them one kindness could alleviate his failure as a parent. 

Mystique and Pietro appeared to be having a staring contest, but it was the former who eventually gave in, dropping her gaze back to her daughter. "What would you have me do, Quicksilver?" she asked, voice low. 

"There's one helicopter left," Pietro pointed out. Scott must have successfully gotten the others off the island after all; Kitty could only hope he took care of the X-Jet too, because she was too tired to even worry about it. "Get in it. Take your daughter and Logan and Caliban with you. Go to the X-Mansion; I'm sure Charles will be glad to have his favorites back. _Wait_ for them to wake, however long it takes. The rest is up to you." 

Something like fear skittered across Mystique's face before she shut it down and straightened with a brisk nod. "As you wish," she sniped curtly. 

"Raven, wait," Lance called, before she could leave for the remaining helicopter. She stopped as he stood up, untucking his shirt and pulling a stack of crumpled file folders out from where they'd been kept safe against his belly. "You wanted these?" 

Wordlessly, she snatched them from his hand, and then she was gone. 

Kitty watched as Fred gently lowered Logan into the back of the blue Robinson, and Caliban clambered in beside him, waiting for Raven to take the controls. Then Fred made for the jet and beckoned for the sitting trio to follow him. 

"Ready to get the hell off this island?" Pietro asked, struggling to sit up and then wincing as something in his chest gave a painful twinge. 

"You don't need to ask me twice," Lance declared. 

* * *

The SHIELD jet, though significantly smaller than the X-Jet, had much more comfortable, bench-style seats. 

"I have a _head injury,"_ Pietro bragged as Lance helped him up and kept him steady. _"And_ I think Todd snapped one of my ribs. Beat that, Pryde." 

"As though being concussed could make you any more of a moron," Wanda groused, flinging a tarp over one of the seats. "Don't get any mud on the upholstery or Fury will make us pay to clean it." 

As though to spite his sister, Pietro deliberately scooted to the middle of an uncovered bench and wriggled into it, sighing deeply before quickly sitting up again to cough. His lungs sounded wet and rattly, and Lance made a mental note to force him to get a chest x-ray later. Developing pneumonia after all of this would just be the cherry on top of the shit sundae they'd all endured. 

Wanda muttered something in angry Polish, and Pietro snickered. "Calling someone a son of a bitch doesn't really work when you're siblings, sister-dear." 

"Don't remind me." 

"Aw Babycakes," Todd placated. "Be kind." 

"I saved his life. I'll be as unkind as I please." 

"That means she loves you," Todd stage-whispered to Pietro. 

Lance watched Wanda's tough demeanor soften when Fred gently squeezed her shoulder, rolling his thumb under the top bump of her spine in a brief massage. The three of them were good for each other, in their own weird way. 

Kitty climbed into the seat behind Pietro, leaning forward and resting her chin near his shoulder. He sighed tiredly and tipped his head back. She wrinkled her nose when his fair hair tickled her face, but didn't move away. 

"No sleeping," she told him firmly. "Not until we get your brain scanned for swelling." 

He flipped her off, and she rolled her eyes. "Real mature." 

The animosity between them was gone, Lance was still continually surprised to see, and he slid into the space next to his girlfriend. They bickered and sniped, but it was no different than the way Wanda and Pietro argued. The atmosphere of hatred was gone and this looked almost like a tentative attempt at affection. 

Kitty leaned into Lance's side the moment he was settled, and he stroked her arm. This was all so surreal. He was afraid to close his eyes, fearing that if he did, he'd wake up again in that tiny cell, the stink of death pressing close on all sides... He shivered. 

Pietro was watching him, brow furrowed. "Don't," he said, when he caught Lance's eye. 

"Don't what?" Lance was taken aback. Had he done something wrong? 

"Don't go back there." Pietro rapped lightly on Lance's skull with his knuckles. "You're here with us. They don't get to have you anymore." 

Lance sighed. Would he ever fully be able to leave that place? It felt like a sizable chunk of his soul had been tainted and rotted by the experience. Still. "I'm here," he confirmed, and Pietro nodded firmly. 

_"Good."_

Fred, powerful muscles bunching, hauled the jet door down and locked it tight. Wanda started up the engines, speeding over the short runway of the tarmac. They were smoothly in the air a moment later. She was a more skilled pilot than the rest of them combined; Lance barely felt the tiniest hint of turbulence. His sensitive stomach was grateful. 

The island was so tiny, he saw as they pulled away from it; it practically disappeared into the fog. On an impulse, he raised both hands, body tensing as he pulled forth the most seismic power he felt capable of at the moment. Pietro and Kitty stared at him, not understanding, until with a great crash and rumble the island began to crumble apart. 

"What are you-" 

"It has to be destroyed. All the research and information and evidence- if other humans find out what Doctor Allen discovered, it could put Rogue and a whole bunch of other people in danger." 

It was a good excuse, but based on the expression on Pietro's face, he guessed the truth: Lance just _needed_ to destroy the place, for the sake of his own sanity. He would have lit a match and watched it burn if he could. And guessing by the glint in his knowing eyes, he approved of the destruction. 

The six of them watched as the island vibrated so hard it disintegrated and went the way of Atlantis, disappearing into the depths of the sea before their jet rose above cloud-level. Lance's gratitude for them all was overwhelming. They had come for him. Though they flew in a SHIELD jet, this battle had been messy, bloody, dangerous and foolhardy. The bond between them had been forged young, strong and gnarled as tree roots; the roots of the Brotherhood. 

Kitty was the first to break the tired silence that spread across the cabin. "Does anyone have a phone I can use?" she asked timidly. "I'd like to talk to my mom."


	14. Bridge (Re)Building

Wanda insisted that the place she brought them to was a hotel.

Pietro had his doubts. 

For one thing, most hotels didn't glow a soft blue-white and stand large enough to be visible from quite high up, yet remained altogether secluded; craggy and asymmetrical as an icicle. For another, he'd never been to a hotel with its own landing strip or welcoming committee of solemn-faced agents, all wearing SHIELD's symbol pinned to their chests. 

Wanda gestured for Fred to lower the door, and sat quite calmly when two agents came aboard. Lance wasn't so calm- though he didn't move, his stillness was so absolute that Pietro swore he'd stopped breathing, his eyes going glassy. 

"Hey," he protested, turning in his seat. "I thought you were here. Come back." He injected a sternness into his voice that might have seemed harsh, but Lance had always responded well to it. 

Lance's eyes remained creepily blank for a moment, but then focused on Pietro's face. The smile he cracked looked forced. "Sorry," he laughed. "They're just, they're making me uncomfortable." 

Pietro looked at the two agents inspecting the cockpit, no doubt searching for crouching figures under the controls ready to take their ice castle under siege. "Yeah, I'm not loving them either." 

Kitty, who'd fallen asleep- the jerk, like she was rubbing his nose in the fact that he couldn't yet- inhaled sharply and stretched, back popping when she woke. "What time is it?" she slurred through a dry mouth. 

"Three-sixteen local time," said Todd, from where he'd curled against Fred's snoring bulk for warmth sometime during the flight. "And by 'local' I mean east Anchorage." 

"Mm." Kitty looked about ready to drift back to sleep, her head pillowed against Lance's chest and his arm hooked around her neck in a way that would have made Pietro feel like he was choking. Their constant clingy lovebird shit was weird, sure; it had always been weird. More remarkable was that even now, watching them like that, he wasn't feeling as jealous as he once had. 

And that was more than enough introspection for the moment. 

"Hey, Scully and Mulder," he called to the two agents now rooting in the storage boxes. "I swear we're not hiding any Xenomorph eggs on this tiny-ass jet, so can we please go somewhere with food? You're making us all uncomfortable." 

A look of delight crossed Kitty's face at the references, like she'd just been presented with a basket of cookies and kittens. "Pietro _Maximoff!"_ she crowed. "Are you a _nerd?!"_

"No," he scoweled, at the same time Lance and Wanda said in unison, _"Yes."_

The agent closest to him, a bronze-skinned woman with a perpetually frowning mouth, only frowned more. "Protocol states-" 

"Lady, a cannibal concussed and nearly drowned me, I'm covered in so much dried mud that it flakes off everywhere when I move, and worst of all, my hair has never looked so horrible. I don't give a damn what protocol states. Either let's get on with this, or go away so I can take an ill-advised nap in peace." 

For once, it looked as though the other five on the jet were in agreement with his rude bluntness. Both agents exchanged a glance, and the taller one gave in with a jerk of his head. "Alright. File down after us. How many of you need medical attention?" 

Todd, Kitty, and Lance all pointed to Pietro. Wanda probably would have too, if she wasn't busy pretending that she was cool compared to her nerd of a little brother. 

They left the jet- shaking Freddie awake first- and filed through a near-empty but ballroomesque lobby to a silver-gated elevator that was operated by a man in an old-fashioned bellhop's uniform. 

"Damn," Todd whistled, when they entered the elevator and one of the agents pressed the button for the forty-fourth floor, and then the button for the basement. "This place is huge. How do you pay for it all if it's only used for SHIELD agents?" 

"The Maitsiak hotel is used to secure many of Alaska's honored guests, from celebrities to political leaders. We're top-of-the-line because our guests deserve the best," said the elevator operator, in the polite but formal way that spoke of rote memorization. 

"Huh. So Fury's shilling out the big bucks for us. He probably feels guilty, sending us after you three alone and all." 

"Fury sent you?" Kitty smiled a little. She and Pietro had stolen the X-Jet and left without bothering to get clearance from their boss. He didn't know about her, but he had certainly expected to be punished for such rash actions. 

They reached the basement first, which was brightly illuminated and lead to, among other things, an expansive set of kitchens, laundry and tailoring services, and a medic's bay. 

"Are you claustrophobic?" asked the female agent. "A full-body MRI is strongly advised." 

"No," Pietro lied, and Lance glanced knowingly at him. 

"I should be checked too," Lance said, instead of revealing this weakness of his ex-boyfriend's. "Just in case. I've been Tasered, beaten, injected with unknown fluids, and had some blood drained." 

To her credit, the agent didn't bat an eyelash, although Kitty went pale at the casual admittance. "Okay. Is anyone else requesting services?" 

The rest of the group shook their heads, and so they parted at the elevator: Lance and Pietro exiting for the medics' bay, the other four rising to their rooms. Pietro saw Fred put a consoling arm around Kitty's shoulders just before the elevator doors closed again. 

The bay was a futuristic; minimalist sterile white and shaped like an egg, like something out of a sci-fi movie, with all the medical equipment looking top-of-the-line. Their bill was sure to be enormous, even by SHIELD's standards. Pietro and Lance were first lead to the shower room. 

"To avoid contaminating the machines," explained the agent. "There's an emergency button inside if you feel faint. Would you like one of us to stand in with you?" 

"No, thank you," said Pietro, rather sharply, and strode past her to try and figure out the complicated buttons on the great stone pillar in the midst of the brown-tiled room. After a moment of poking and prodding, hot water began to rain in a steady sheet from a circlet around the top of the pillar, giving it the appearance of a massive, clear umbrella or mushroom. As he stripped out of his clothes, leaving them in a sodden pile on the stone benches that ringed the room, the water running off of him puddled a dark brown around his feet before swirling down the floor drains. He was positively filthy. 

Lance, haloed in steam on the opposite side of the pillar, was dutifully not looking at him as he pumped soap from the wall-mounted dispenser and began washing the mud from his skin. For some reason, this annoyed Pietro greatly. 

"What?" he snapped. "It's nothing you haven't seen before." He made it a point to stare at the rainbow of bruises mottling Lance's hairless body seemingly all over. 

"I don't think there's anything I could do that wouldn't bug you," said Lance pragmatically, eyes closed, tipping his face up into the water. "If I look, you'll get mad. If I don't, you'll still be mad." 

That he wasn't wrong just fueled Pietro's anger. _"Look_ at me, Alvers!" 

Lance's rootbeer-colored eyes snapped open. He stepped around the pillar until he was within reaching distance, and then he surveyed Pietro quietly, one animal sizing up another. Pietro stubbornly stared back, refusing to fold his arms or do anything at all to hide himself away. "I'm looking." 

The unfiltered warmth in his voice did things to Pietro's pulse, until anger faded to something he'd avoided for a long time: sadness. A hollow, aching, _lonely_ sorrow. He finally allowed himself to grieve over losing Lance all those years back, of very nearly losing him permanently this weekend. 

"You left me." He said it like the accusation it was. "You left me, but not really. You never could just _leave me alone_ to move on." 

Now wasn't really a good time for such a discussion, but it was there, raw and sore and right at the surface, prickly as knives under skin. 

"And you still came to find me." Lance stepped closer; Pietro watched water droplets curve down his face. "Why did you do _that?"_

Pietro was good at lying while still maintaining eye-contact. "So Pryde wouldn't get smeared to a bloody pulp during the first five minutes of her mission. I was just in the right place at the right time." 

"Tro." the chiding tone was too much. He had to look away. "You can't lie to me." 

Maybe not as good as he thought. 

"Does it matter why I did it?" 

"Don't you think it does?" 

Silence stretched. The water running off Pietro's body went from dark brown to a light, clearish beige as more and more mud went down the drains. 

"Let's try this," Lance said at last, and filled his palm with shampoo from a dispenser, lathering it between his palms. "You're angry with me. Which. You have every right to be." 

_Furious._

"I love you." 

This caught Pietro off-guard. He didn't react as, with aching gentleness, Lance began to clean his hair, avoiding the bloody spot where Wolf had beat his head into concrete. It seemed, in that moment, something he had no objection to allowing, despite its implications. 

"I think you still care for me." 

When he neither confirmed or denied this, Lance turned Pietro by the shoulders so that he could look into his eyes. "I ask you to consider giving me a chance, Tro. When they took me, when I thought I wouldn't be getting out alive, I could just think... If I ever got out... You and Kitty are the most important people in the world to me. I want you in my life. I know I've fucked up bad, Tro. I know what I did was unforgivable." 

He carded his fingers through Pietro's silvery hair, working the shampoo to the roots until the water ran clear through the fine strands. "But I'm begging you. Please. Please give me another chance. I'll only need the one." 

The sincerity in his dark eyes was like a dagger in Pietro's chest, piercing his ribs and twisting in his heart. He closed his eyes, tilted his face into the large hand that held him. He'd had time to think, too, in those bizarre moments-that-lasted-hours of lungs being filled with mud. Kitty, he'd thought of. Wanda, of course. Fred and Todd... And _Lance._ It _always_ seemed to come back to Lance. 

"Tro, I-" Lance tilted his face up with a knuckle under his chin. Pietro's pierced heart skittered and bucked wildly at the familiarity of it all, but at last he found his voice, heavy with sternness and sincerity. 

_"No._ I'm not sneaking around with you behind Pryde's back. I'll... I'll think about it, okay? But we're not doing this without talking to her."

He shrugged out of the terribly familiar warmth that was Lance Alvers' hold and went to the airing cupboards to find a towel, terry-cloth slippers, and a bathrobe to dry off and dress in. The moment the water was shut off the noisy vents kicked on, sucking the steam back so loudly they couldn't speak. 

Pietro stepped out to the hall, where Agent Frowny-Face was still waiting for them. "So!" he said cheerfully, and she looked up at him as though he were a ticking bomb about to go off at any moment. "Where can a guy get stuffed in a tube so strangers can look at his brain around this place?" 

* * *

The six agents were allotted two conjoining rooms on the forty-fourth floor; shockingly ordinary things despite the grandeur of the hotel. In one room, Fred had pushed two queen-sized beds together and it was there the four of them were clustered, surrounded by platters of food, dressed in the same sweats Lance and Pietro had been given, and speaking animatedly to Nick Fury on a laptop. 

"Hey, _yooooou,"_ Pietro drawled gleefully at his boss, his grin eclipsing his face. "I missed that sexy mug of yours." He leapt, catlike, onto the bed, stepped neatly between piles of food, and sank down crosslegged against Fred's belly before helping himself to the remainder of Wanda's burger and fries. 

"Maximoff, are you high?" came Fury's tinny voice from the laptop speakers. 

"Maybe a little. My skull's intact, but my brain's bruised up, so. They gave me the _good stuff._ Oh, did I say good? I meant great. Also, I'm getting my ear pierced again because Lance's girlfriend said it was cool, and you can't stop me." 

Lance leaned into frame, and Pietro saw Fury visibly relax at the sight of his kidnapped agent. "Good grief, Alvers, you're as bald as Charles," was all he said, which was as good as an _'I was worried about you,'_ from Fury. 

"Worse," Lance groaned ruefully, and took a cinnamon bun laden with warm icing from a tray on the nearby desk. "At least Charles gets eyebrows." 

"On the bright side, if his hair doesn't grow back we could do some pretty sick tattoos on the back of his head to match Tro's piercing," Todd suggested, which gave Pietro a helpless case of the giggles.

_"Anyway,"_ Fury said pointedly, wearing that put-upon expression he always wore when he started wishing he'd hired respectable mutants for the mutant-inclusive division, instead of this band of delinquents. None of them were fooled. "After Pryde ripped out a man's heart, Dukes crushed another man's face, and Wanda disintegrated an unknown number of soldiers, did anything else happen?" 

"Wait, Kitty did what?" Lance stopped mid-bite, glancing in alarm at his girlfriend. 

The debriefing- suddenly that word was hilarious- carried on for what seemed like hours, but couldn't have been longer than twenty minutes before Fury was signing off, reminding them that they needed to come home within the next few days. _("Because you're tired of watching all of Fred's pets, right?" "Not helping, Tolanski.")_

That he didn't slap a concrete time and date on their return spoke volumes about how he must truly be feeling under that stern frown of his. 

Pietro, feeling very sleepy and content, had balled himself up under Fred's chin and kept dozing in and out of the conversation. "I love you too, by the way," it suddenly seemed very important to inform Fred, somewhere in the midst of it all. "I'm sorry I'm such a shit most of the time and never say it, but. Like. I _do-"_

Fred had smiled gently. "I know. It's okay." 

"Do you love _me?!"_ Todd had exclaimed, grinning mightily, and he'd cackled when Pietro affirmed it. "I'm _never_ letting you live this down, Mush-Tro." 

At another point, Pietro must have dozed off for longer than others, because the people around him began to stir. When he peeled his eyelids open again, the laptop had been closed and the dishes were being put away. 

"Lance...?" he asked groggily, and arms were immediately sliding underneath him, pulling him up into a warm chest. He smiled, perfectly at peace, and fell back to sleep.


	15. Conversational Candy

He woke, and for a moment he was content with the world.

Gradually, though, his higher brain functions began catching up with his situation. 

Warm breath was hitting his cheek at regular intervals. Unless something very strange had happened with his respiratory system, he strongly suspected it was another person breathing on his face. Not only that, but a bulky body was pressed tight to his back, and an arm encircled his chest. 

Also, he was in pain. Not horrifically so, but his head throbbed with the dull beginnings of a headache, and his ribs felt like they'd taken quite a beating. Not to mention his desert-dry mouth no doubt caused by some drug or another. 

After some pondering on these oddities, he opened his eyes, and Kitty's face swam into view, illuminated by the line of bright afternoon sunlight beaming through the gap between blackout curtains. She was still sleeping, her head cushioned on the same pillow he used. She was dreaming, if the way her eyes moved under their lids was any suggestion, and the frown her mouth was set in suggested unhappy dreams. 

More alarmingly, at some point in the night he'd apparently gripped her by the waist in an attempt to pull her closer. He still had an arm around her now, and his palm was definitely touching bare skin. It was a swell of panic that had him checking to see if they both still had their clothes on. (They did. Her shirt had just crept up in the back.) 

That still didn't answer the question as to who was spooning him, but he was awake enough now to hazard a guess. Sure enough, just by tilting his head a little, he was able to confirm Alvers half-sinking him into the mattress. 

Well. 

That was different. 

He almost considered going back to sleep, until he happened to glance up and see that, above his pillow, Kitty's free hand nested inside Lance's; a perfect fit. 

_They_ were a perfect fit. 

It was Pietro who was in the way.

Moving very slowly, he carefully extricated his arm back from Kitty. More difficult was wriggling out of Lance's vice-like hold without waking him, but after several long minutes he managed it. Lance was half hanging off the bed; despite Kitty being very small, a Queen-sized wasn't made to hold three muscular mutants. Yet more proof of just how much an intrusion Pietro really was. 

His terry slippers from the showers were still on the floor, and he stepped into them, then let himself out into the empty hallway. 

There were shops on the second floor. That floor alone was large and bustling enough to be a mall. He could buy some clothes, hopefully get an internet connection to wire a plane ticket through his own bank account. Then he'd go... 

Where? 

There was a brief pang in his chest when he remembered how far his sister, his _friends,_ had come to save him. This wasn't fair to them. But to stay would be to suffocate in humiliation. What was he _thinking-_ how high had he been- to ever think this would work out? 

His chest was feeling tight with repressed anxiety, and his hands were shaking. He let out an unintentional yelp of pain when crouching into his running position made his broken rib shift inside him. _Damn, damn, damn..._ He bent, holding himself, waiting it out. 

Waiting too long, apparently, for a moment later the door had banged open and a wild-eyed Lance was staring at him. He looked around frantically, as though searching for invisible attackers that were surely beating on Pietro. 

_Damn._

Lance took a long moment to assess what his eyes told him; then he sighed. "You're leaving," he said dully. He looked a little like Pietro had just punched him in the stomach, but his jaw was set firm. 

"I-" Pietro stuttered. Then, "You shouldn't have put me in the bed with you." It was the only concrete argument he had. 

Lance laughed. It was not a happy sound. "I didn't. I put you in your own bed. You kept crawling back in after us, so." 

Glancing over Lance's shoulder, Pietro saw that the second bed was indeed rumpled. It just made him feel worse. So he really was the third wheel, physically crawling between a matched set like some desperate, pathetic slug. 

Kitty, woken by Lance's frantic scramble out of bed, appeared in the doorway as well, her sleep-groggy brain struggling to understand what was happening. After a moment, it clicked. 

"Please don't leave!" she cried, and _oh._ She might as well have ripped Pietro's heart out like that freak of a doctor's with those words. He actually reeled at the sound of them. 

"Kitty!" Lance turned sharply to her. Her blue eyes widened, not understanding what she'd done wrong. Of course she couldn't know. She had no idea that those words, that tone, was exactly what Pietro had screamed, _begged_ of his father, so many years ago. 

"It's fine," he said firmly to Lance. He didn't need to be barking at Kitty like that for something she couldn't possibly know. To Kitty, he said only, "it's time for me to go, Pryde. I'm... glad I got to know you better." 

It seemed to dawn on her, then, that this goodbye was a complete and total one. That the three of them would not be seeing each other again. Her lower lip quivered in a way that signified tears were on the horizon. But then she bit down firmly on that traitorous lip and turned a glare his way instead. 

"And here I was beginning to think you were _brave,"_ she growled. "What was all that stuff you told Mystique, then?! It's not enough just to be there for the bad times." 

"That's different," he protested. "I don't have an obligation to stay. I'm not your parents. I'm not your boyfriend. If I want to go, it's my right to do it." 

"Because you're scared," she insisted. "Guess what? I'm scared too. I'm _terrified._ The person I love most in the world was stolen from me. I killed two people yesterday. And now someone else I... I'm starting to care about... won't even admit that there might _be_ something more." Her eyes were shiny and brimming full; her voice broke, but she didn't drop her stare. "Look me in the eye and tell me that you don't want this, too!" 

"What exactly _is_ 'this'?!" he roared back, forgetting the pain in his ribs as he advanced on her. His hands were balled into fists at his sides; he was beginning to shake. "What do you want, Pryde? You want us to have three little matching towel racks? Three shiny promise rings?! You want to get a giant bed so we can spoon all night and pretend it's not the weirdest fucking thing in the world?!" 

Lance tried to step in front of Kitty, obviously not liking the way Pietro was shouting at her. She wasn't having it, and ducked immediately under his arm to get back in Pietro's face. 

"Maybe _it is_ what I want!" she shrieked, her voice reaching new decibels. "We could have a real chance at happiness here and you-" 

"Enough." 

Though Wanda spoke quietly, her cool voice echoed and reverberated through the hallway. A moment later Pietro was knocked back and then up off his feet with the force of a small hurricane. When he dared open his eyes, hovering some six feet above the ground, he saw his sister standing in the doorway of the room. Though they'd clearly woken her up with their shouting, her hair remained impeccably in place. 

She looked from him to Kitty, who was also suspended above the ground in a glowing crimson orb; unharmed but shocked into silence. Lance remained standing as he was, but a sharp look from Wanda told him that that could easily be remedied if he tried to interfere. 

"Alright, a couple things," she said. "You're screaming in a _nice hotel's hallway._ If I could hear you, so can any other residents on this floor. Knock it off. That's rude." 

She shifted her weight to lean back against the doorjamb; Pietro felt the orb that held him shift as well, in sync with her movement. 

"Next," and she shook Kitty a little- not dangerously so, but the younger woman absolutely felt it. "Your idea of happiness is not necessarily everyone else's. What you're asking for is called a polyamorous relationship. It requires a lot of effort and hard work and _communication._ Not screaming your ideals at someone who is allowed not to want it. 'No means no' is a two-way street, princess. Or a three-way street." 

Kitty's eyes were wide. She looked to where Pietro was hovering, and then hung her head. He'd noticed she had a bit of a temper before but, like Lance, it cooled off when logic was applied. Not that he'd been so good about keeping a calm tone himself. 

Wanda was looking at him, so he turned to meet her eye, and found that she was scowling in a way that made his stomach knot. 

"Don't think you're off the hook, jerk," she scowled at her brother, dragging him closer with the flick of a wrist until they were almost eye-to-eye. "Yeah, it's your right to leave whenever you like. But you know what? That's an absolute _dick move._ You have _family_ here." 

Oh, she was mad. Her mouth had scrunched to a small line, and emotion flecked her would-be-casual voice. "Not just me. You think those two-" she jerked a thumb at the door behind her, to the room she shared with Todd and Fred. "Wouldn't be _heartbroken_ to be left by you without so much as a goodbye? Grow the hell up, Pietro. I know it's your instinct to run away from the things you're afraid of, but maybe try thinking about those you leave behind." 

Hot shame filled him at her words. She was right. He would have thought of that himself, had he just had time and distance away from the problem. He would have... Surely he would have thought to contact them before he was too far away. 

There was something else in her face. She tried to cover it, but he'd been in her head. He knew her almost as well as he knew himself. She was remembering a rainy night, so long ago now, of being dragged away from her twin. She'd cried for him to save her then. _Oh, Wanda..._

He squirmed inside the hex, managing to free himself without too much difficulty. If she'd really wanted to trap him in place, he wouldn't have been able to escape, but she didn't stop him from landing on his feet and striding to her. In a second he was crushing her to him like he should have done that night. His rib screamed in protest; he ignored it. 

"I'm sorry," he told his twin, as quiet as he was sincere. "So sorry, Wanda."

She stiffened, and he thought she'd try to push him off, but instead her hands gripped his arms so tightly it hurt. "Don't do that again," she said, and her voice broke. She was insulting him angrily in Polish, and he sighed, closing his eyes. She was right; he was indeed a rolling, cretinous cat house. 

He heard Kitty's bare feet touch the carpeted hallway when Wanda gently set her back down. Then she was approaching the embracing twins. 

"Pietro-" she tugged at his sleeve. "I'm sorry too. I never meant to make it sound like you weren't allowed to say no- you always are. I just. I like you, and Lance loves you. And we both... we've talked about it before, you know. We want you with us. That's what I was trying to _tell_ you when I came to your apartment in the first place." 

He looked at her over his sister's head for a long moment. She wasn't lying. She wasn't being patronizing, or pitying him; taking him on as some sort of burden, like he'd so feared. Kitty didn't have guile like that in her- she was pretty straightforward. _He,_ Pietro, was the one who so often said one thing and meant another.

He tried for honesty now. "I don't know if something like that is gonna work." 

"Does anybody know whether a relationship will work out? People who have been married for sixty years suddenly decide they're not meant to be together. People- things- are hard. Doesn't mean it's not worth a try, if... if that was what you wanted." 

Pietro loosened his grip on his sister until she relaxed her vicelike grip on his arms. When she turned her head away, in the soft hallway lights, she looked very much like their mother. It made him feel very small. 

Then he looked Kitty in the eye. "I don't wanna screw up things with you and Lance." Words he thought he'd never, ever say. 

Her eyebrows hit her hairline. "Pietro, I'm pretty sure _I_ screwed up things with you and Lance years ago." 

"You didn't," Lance interjected, approaching. "Neither of you did. I'm the one who screwed it all up. I was stupid and. Hell. I don't deserve either of you, and I know it. But I love you both, and if I didn't try to make it right, didn't at least try to make it work, I'd be the biggest idiot in the world." 

When they both looked at him, he fidgeted with his sleeve, then said "I'm an alcoholic." 

It was so out of left field that even Wanda was looking at him. It wasn't like it was a secret, that the Avalanche had a drinking problem, but... 

"I thought I'd never hear you say it," Kitty admitted, looking a little dumbfounded. "We fight about it constantly." 

"Yeah. And I... when you were both sleeping, I went to the hotel mini-bar," he confessed. "And I drank a lot. I didn't even care that Fury will see it on the bills; I just couldn't stop myself any longer. I'd been hiding it all night but I got the shakes bad. I'm. Sorry. I just had to say it. For. For full disclosure, and all that." 

Pietro had no idea how to respond to that other than, "Uh, okay. I'm. Thank you for... disclosing." He paused. "You know we already knew that, right?" 

Lance's face and neck reddened and he looked away. "Yeah, just. Communication. Like Wanda said." 

Even hairless, even confessing to a disease, Pietro still found him cute when he blushed. That should have been impossible, and yet. Damn. He still had it as bad for Alvers as he ever did. 

"I'm gonna work on it, though," Lance insisted with sudden vigor. "I'm gonna... get help. I was taken away because I was too drunk to even fight. It's not gonna happen again." 

"I know," Pietro admitted. "I heard it all on that voice mail you left me. It's been killing me. If I'd listened, I could have saved you." 

"If I hadn't stomped off after fighting with you," Kitty said earnestly. _"I_ could have-" 

"I'm not going to stand out here and listen to you three victim-blame yourselves," Wanda snapped, irritated. "You are professionals. We are trained to explain to trauma survivors that bad things happen because bad people do them." She turned to go back into her room. "I'm ordering waffles from room service. You can't have any unless you stop this." 

When she pulled the door open, Todd, who'd clearly been eavesdropping, fell out into the hallway. He smiled sheepishly up at Wanda. "Hey, Babycakes. I can explain..." 

"Explain what?" Pietro snorted. "That since you've been trained as a spy, you have to spy on your friends?" 

"Shut up, Mush-Tro. You love me, remember?" 

* * *

Pietro crunched another handful of small, sugary hearts between his teeth, taking a savage glee in devouring their sappy phrases. He'd been through five boxes of the stale conversation hearts leftover from Valentines Day in the downstairs shopping area, and was beginning to think his plan was more stupid than it was worth. 

Wanda, flinging herself, shoes and all, onto the bed beside him, messed up his little candy pile of "maybe"s that went skittering over the blanket. "Hey," he protested, halfheartedly. 

"I got you something." 

When he looked at her, he saw she was holding up a small pot of- 

_"Hair gel!"_ He snatched it joyously out of her hands. "Wanda Maximoff, you might be the only sane person in this entire hotel. Where did you even _find_ this?! I swear I looked in every store-" 

He realized it was already open and three quarters used up, and glanced suspiciously at her tidy hair. She grinned a bit. "I got it from my bag in the jet," she admitted. "I never leave home without it." 

She was dressed nicely- in a familiar set of black trousers and jewel-red shirt, gloves and boots in place. Her face was fully made up, her ears with their multiple piercings (Fury had never dared tell _her_ to take them out) adorned with various studs and hoops. It was good to see her like this again, if only because he knew it was how she felt most comfortable. 

Before sprinting to the bathroom to fix his disaster-hair, he stopped, pulled something from his pocket. "I got you something, too." 

She stuck out a hand expectantly. "Gimme." 

He did so. She paused, clearly not expecting the feel of a cold metal chain in her palm. Looking at it, she frowned- then stilled. 

"Is this-" she began, blinking at the tiny star he'd salvaged from his old clothes and purchased a fine silver chain to keep it on. "It's not-" 

"It's mom's," he confirmed. "Her Magen David. It doesn't really go with your outfit, but-" 

She'd already pulled the chain over her head, adjusting the tiny star so that it sat neatly between her collarbones. Seeing it on her like that made something in his chest that had nothing to do with his rib constrict, and he quickly stepped into the bathroom to fix his hair and compose himself. 

With the safety of a door between them, he explained how he'd happened upon that piece of supposedly lost family history. She listened quietly with that same hawklike gaze that used to unnerve him so. Nobody paid attention like Wanda. 

When he finished, she remained quiet a moment, running her index finger meditatively over the smooth red lacquer of her thumbnail. "I can't believe Father did that for us," she murmured to herself, before turning to meet her brother's eyes. "I've been meaning to ask you. Sometimes I go to mom's grave to, you know. Clean it up a little. Pull some weeds, maybe leave new flowers. It'd... be nice to have some company. The next time I go." 

Pietro hadn't been to their mother's grave since the day she'd died. The old him would have ran at the suggestion- ran away from that as he did everything else that frightened or saddened him. The Pietro he was now only swallowed, nodded. "I'd like that." 

She clearly wanted to get back onto more neutral, less emotionally charged ground as much as he did, because she turned back to the candies on the blanket. "Let me guess," she said, a wry grin twitching her darkly painted lips. "You're gonna leave some of these on Pryde and Alvers' pillows because you're too emotionally constipated to tell them you want to date them." 

"Um." Pietro was absolutely not blushing. "I- yes. That." 

She held up a yellow heart printed with the words _Be Mine_ on it in red dye. "Cute." Then she ate it. 

"Hey, I was gonna use that one-!" he protested, which was partially true. He'd considered it, at least. 

"What did I say about communication?" she asked through a mouth full of processed sugar. "Use your words, Agent. Go on. They're downstairs pigging out on the buffet." With a lazy flick of her wrist, an unseen force was pushing Pietro slowly towards the door, skidding him on his heels. 

"Wan _daaaa,"_ he whined in protest, already knowing it was futile. 

"Trust me on this," she grinned a little wickedly, an expression more similar to Todd's than her own. "I know more about poly relationships than you might think. It takes work, but if you put your heart into it, I think you'll find it's pretty rewarding. Go follow your heart, lover-boy; I want to watch TV in peace." 

When he gawked at her, too surprised to ask any follow-up questions, the door opened for him and he was deposited neatly into the hallway. "Good luck!" she called, and then the door clicked cheerfully shut behind him. 

He continued to stare at the blank surface of the door for a good solid minute before a slow smile spread across his face. How ridiculous his life had gotten. 

He straightened up, adjusted his clothes, checked his breath by breathing into his cupped palm- sugar and artificial banana, sigh. She couldn't even have kicked him out with a stick of gum?- and then turned to walk towards the elevators. 

It was time.


	16. Aftermath

**Two Years Later**

There was nothing on his mind when he danced.

Club music moved around and through him, and he on it, nothing but a series of expressive pulses and heart-heavy bass. 

Lance and Kitty didn't enjoy clubbing as much as Pietro did. It was a rare occasion that he could convince one or both of them to join him, but that was alright. There was always plenty to do together. 

"Hey," a voice behind him made him jolt. "Don't think I've seen you here before. Can I buy you a drink?" 

Pietro turned to see a tall brunet man with a decent face and a more-than-decent chest, aesthetically exposed under a series of thin black buckles and straps. Pietro _did_ seem to have a thing for tall, dark, and handsome, but still- 

"Sorry," he shook his head. "My boyfriend's going on one year sober. His girlfriend and I gave up drinking to support him. I'm just here to dance." 

There was a pause as the attractive stranger processed this; then he smiled in understanding. "You're poly! Right on. Have a good night." 

He tipped an imaginary hat and left Pietro to his dancing. That was good. Some losers took _'In a poly relationship'_ to mean _'Will sleep with anyone and their boyfriend/girlfriend/random stranger/tennis coach's dog'_ rather than the specific, complex, and committed relationship it was. That was when he had to start kicking ass and taking names. 

For Pietro, being poly was this: a three-bedroom apartment with a mezuzah of their own displayed on the doorpost. 

It was Sunday night dinner-and-a-movie at Fred's house, a cat on everybody's lap; and Wednesday morning breakfast and mimosas with Kitty's mother. (Lance made an incredible eggs benedict with hollandaise; Pietro filleted the briny salmon and plucked fat capers for the bagels.) 

It was cramming into Lance's beloved jeep and bickering over who got to ride shotgun that day on the way to work. 

It meant that, when Lance helped carry the casket as a pallbearer at Kitty's father's funeral, Pietro was right there beside the mourning Shadowcat, squeezing onto her hand as she clutched her mother. An anchor for an anchor in a storm.

It meant that Rogue always had a fold-out sofa and clean sheets to sleep on when she felt like visiting, just because. 

It meant that when Scott mailed them an envelope holding a photograph pressed between two sheets of cardboard and a note that read _'Found this in the jet,'_ Kitty framed and hung the image of Pietro's mother right beside the childhood photo of her with her parents all dressed up for Purim. 

It meant having strong arms to hold him when he cried like the world was going to break when he finally, finally returned to his mothers' graveside, and then turning right back around and holding Lance through his shaking withdrawal symptoms. 

What a strange puzzle they all were: The man who wore his heart on his sleeve; the woman with the strength and courage of a lion; and he, Pietro, who had never truly thought before that happiness had been written in his stars. He'd be lying if he said it wasn't work and effort and sometimes struggle, but he had faith, now, that the three of them could pull through anything together. They'd stepped into hell and out again for one another. They could certainly handle smaller daily struggles cohesively as well. 

They made life an adventure. 

As the clock struck two, Pietro found himself squirming out of the pile of sweaty, euphorically moving bodies to the exit doors of the club. It was early for him, but he was starting to feel homesick. From the tight pocket of his jeans he withdrew his phone, checking it. Three text messages awaited him. 

From contact 'Rockbrained': _I'm heading to bed. Come home safe. Ilu._

From contact 'Meowth': _If I'm sleeping on the couch when you get home,_ DO NOT MOVE ME _this time. Lance won the bet about which_ Chopped _contestant would be the champion, and he's too smug to be tolerable right now. > : ( _

From contact 'Meowth': _Statement redacted. The couch is lonely. Please move me. Ilu(x2)_

Pietro grinned, typed out a couple snarky responses, and stuck his phone back into his pocket, walking quickly across the road to a more deserted lot where he could begin his run home. His family was waiting for him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it.  
> If this were a movie, this would be the point where the credits would start rolling to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising," Kitty would be credited as Lilly Collins, and there would be a cute little 8-bit animation of a toad kicking a wolf's butt all around the screen. (@Marvel- where's _my_ $97mil budget, huh???)
> 
> Anyway, this project was about 6 months of planning and replanning and deleting huge chunks that made no sense and accidentally forgetting to save entire chapters and having to rewrite them more than once. But I'm satisfied with this as an end result. Thank you for reading. [heart]


End file.
